“Oh, that’s all right. You’ve done the important part of that. Let some one else write it up.”
I smiled at the compliment. I went downstairs and had somebody explain to me what it was the paper was going to do and congratulated myself. Now I was to have a chance to visit the World’s Fair, which had not yet opened when I left Chicago. I could look up my father, whom I had neglected since my mother’s death, as well as such other members of the family as were still living in Chicago; but, most important, I could go around to the Globe there and “blow” to my old confrères about my present success. All I had to do was to go along and observe what the girls did and how they enjoyed themselves and then write it up.
I went up the street humming and rejoicing, and finally landed in the “art department” of my friends.
“I’m being sent to Chicago to the World’s Fair,” I said gleefully.
“Bully for you,” was the unanimous return. “Let’s hope you have a good time.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
As the time drew near, though, the thought of being a sort of literary chaperon to a lot of school-teachers, probably all of them homely and uninteresting, was not as cheering as it might have been. I wondered how I should manage to be civil and interesting to so many, how I was to extract news out of them. Yet the attitude of the business manager and the managing editor, as well as the editor-in-chief or publisher, Mr. Knapp, to whom I was now introduced by my city editor, was enough to convince me that whatever I thought of it I was plainly rising in their esteem. Although no word was said about any increase in pay, which I still consider the limit of beggarly, pennywise policy, these magnificoes were most cordial, smiled and congratulated me on my work and then turned me over to the man who had the financing of the trip in charge. He reminded me a good deal of a banker or church elder, small, dark, full-whiskered, solemn, affable, and assured me that he was glad that I had been appointed, that I was the ideal man for the place, and that he would see to it that anything I needed to make my trip pleasant would be provided. I could scarcely believe that I was so important.
After asking me to go and see the superintendent of schools, also of the party as guest of the Republic, he said he would send to me a Mr. Dean, who would be his agent en route to look after everything—baggage, fares, hotels, meals. The latter came and at once threw a wet blanket over me: he was so utterly dull and commonplace. His clothes, his shoes, his loud tie and his muddy, commonplace intellect all irritated me beyond measure. Something he said—“Now, of course, we all want to do everything we can to please these ladies and make them happy”—irritated me. The usual pastoral, supervisory stuff, I thought, and I at once decided that I did not want him to bother me in any way. “What! Did this horrible bounder assume that he was regulating my conduct on this trip, or that I was going out of my way to accommodate myself to him and his theory of how the trip should be conducted, or to accept him as a social equal? ‘We must’ indeed!—I, Theodore Dreiser, the well-known newspaper writer of St. Louis! The effrontery! Well, he would get scant attention from me, and the more he let me alone the better it would be for him and all of us!”
And now Wandell also began to irritate me by attempting to give me minute instructions as to just what was wanted and how I was to write it, although, as I understood it, I was now working for the managing editor who was to have the material edited in the telegraph department. Besides, I thought that I was now entitled to a little leeway and discretion in the choice of what I should report. The idea of making it all advertising for the Republic and myself a literary wet-nurse to a school party was a little too much.