book-holders that swung into positions suitable to appropriate
attitudes; there were piles of little green boxes with red capital
letters of the alphabet upon them, and big red boxes with black small
letters. There was a writing-lamp that cast an æsthetic glow upon
another appropriate attitude--and there was one typewriter with
note-paper upon it, and another with MS. paper already in position.

"My God!" I thought--"to these heights the Muse soars."

As I looked at the gleaming pillars of the typewriters, the image of my
own desk appeared to me; chipped, ink-stained, gloriously dusty. I
thought that when again I lit my battered old tin lamp I should see
ashes and match-ends; a tobacco-jar, an old gnawed penny penholder, bits
of pink blotting-paper, match-boxes, old letters, and dust everywhere.
And I knew that my attitude--when I sat at it--would be inappropriate.

Callan was ticking off the telegram upon his machine. "It will go in the
morning at eight," he said.




CHAPTER THREE


To encourage me, I suppose, Callan gave me the proof-sheets of his next
to read in bed. The thing was so bad that it nearly sickened me of him
and his jobs. I tried to read the stuff; to read it conscientiously, to
read myself to sleep with it. I was under obligations to old Cal and I
wanted to do him justice, but the thing was impossible. I fathomed a