The little wife laughed quietly.
"I graduated; I married; I came to Chicago," began St. John, sententiously.
"Veni, vidi, vici," said I.
"Quite the contrary; I was conquered. I had that idea which young men from the east, just out of college, are apt to have, that in this great western city there was a comparative lack of intellectual culture, and that a man of my education must speedily and easily get into a position of prominence, where my talents would earn me a fine living. But I very soon found where my mistake lay. I had not been bred to work,—real, practical, marketable work,—either mental or physical. The professions were open to me, as to any other beginner,—nothing more. I could not step out of college into a lucrative practice at the bar; but I could enter a law-office, and study. So of the other professions. If I had any one idea more prominent than another, it was that I could secure an editorial situation at once on one of the newspapers here. I was surprised to find that there was absolutely no demand for such services as I had to offer.
"'Do you know anything about the newspaper business?' was the first question put to me, by the first publisher to whom I made application.
"That was the very last question that I had expected to have asked of me. Of course I imagined myself competent, or I should not have applied for editorial employment; but I knew the publisher meant, Had I had actual experience on the press? I felt so sure of myself that I was tempted to answer him 'Yes,' but the fact is I was never brought up with such a reverence for the truth, as to always keep at a respectful distance from it; so I told him I had not, but I could quickly learn.
"'We are in no need of students,' said he; 'and, even if we took you to teach you, your pay would not settle your washing-bill.'
"One editor was good enough to let me try my hand at writing a political article. I sat down in his sanctum and went to work. At the end of two hours I handed him what I had written, quite confident that I had settled the question of utility. It was an essay that would have brought me honor at college. He read it and smiled.
"'I don't want to hurt your feelings at all," said he, 'but you have been two hours about a piece of work that a ready writer would knock off in half an hour, and now it is done it is good for nothing. You make the mistake so many have made before you, that an editor does not need to be bred to his business. My alma mater was a printing-office,' said he, proudly, 'and I crept up the ladder round by round. When I commenced editorial labor, I dropped type-setting, at which I earned two dollars a day, to handle the reporter's pencil at seven dollars a week. If you think you could do anything as a reporter, I'll show you our Mr. Pyke, the local editor.'
"Mr. Pyke was a rough one.