States, and produced from my pocketbook letters from two of them; we
found that we were both respectful admirers of a charming lady who had
recently undergone a surgical operation; he had been a guest at my club
in Boston, I had been a guest at his club in New York. When I left him I
thought poorly of the chances of the remnant of the six hundred.

Some weeks passed and I heard nothing more of the matter. During this
time I had leisure to think over what I had heard from time to time
about Joseph Pulitzer, and to speculate, with the aid of some
imaginative friends, upon the probable advantages and disadvantages of
the position for which I was a candidate.

Gathered together, my second-hand impressions of Joseph Pulitzer made
little more than a hazy outline. I had heard or read that he had landed
in New York in the early sixties, a penniless youth unable to speak a
word of English; that after a remarkable series of adventures he had
become a newspaper proprietor and, later, a millionaire; that he had
been stricken blind at the height of his career; that his friends and
his enemies agreed in describing him as a man of extraordinary ability
and of remarkable character; that he had been victorious in a bitter
controversy with President Roosevelt; that one of the Rothschilds had
remarked that if Joseph Pulitzer had not lost his eyesight and his
health he, Pulitzer, would have collected into his hands all the money
there was; that he was the subject of one of the noblest portraits
created by the genius of John Sargent; and that he spent most of his
time on board a magnificent yacht, surrounded by a staff of six
secretaries.

This was enough, of course, to inspire me with a keen desire to meet Mr.
Pulitzer; it was not enough to afford me the slightest idea of what life