Sitting on the edge of this wretched hotel bed, Franklin smiled vaguely, his fine hand moving through his glistening white hair.
“And then?”
“Well, one day the editor in Indianapolis said I ought to send some of my drawing down to New York, or go down—that I would get along. He thought I ought to study art.”
“Yes?”
“Well, I saved enough drawing for the Indianapolis News and writing poetry and pitching hay and plowing wheat to go that autumn to Chicago; I spent three months in the Art Institute. Being in those days a good Sunday School boy, a publisher of religious literature, socalled, bought some work of me and at Christmas time I sold a half page to the old Chicago Record. The following fall I went to New York. I found a little room and sold sketches, and then I got on a paper—the News. You remember.”
“Certainly. Was that your first place?”
“The very first.”
“And I thought you had been in New York years and years.”
I can see Franklin even yet, standing before his drawingboard in the newspaper office, making horrible Sunday “layouts.” He was so gentle, good looking and altogether attractive.
“Yes, and then what?”