The fact that I had gained the notice of a man as important as McCullagh, a man about whom a contemporaneous poet had written a poem, was almost more than I could stand. I walked on air. Yet the next morning, returning to work, I found myself listed for only “Hotels” and “Heard in the Corridors,” my usual tasks, and was . Why not great tasks always? Why not noble hours always? Yet once I had recovered from this I walked about the downtown streets convulsively digging my fingers into my palms and shaking myself with delight as I thought of Saturday, Sunday and Monday. That was something worth talking about. Now I was a real newspaper man. I had beaten the whole town, and in a new city, a city strange to me!  
Having practically nothing to do and my excitement cooling some, I returned to the art department this same day to report on what had happened. By now I was so set up that I could scarcely my delight and told both volubly, not only about my raise in salary but also that I had been given a twenty-dollar bill by McCullagh himself—an amazing thing, of course. This last was received with feelings by the department: McCord was pleased, of course, but Dick naturally was inclined to be . He was conscious of the fact that his drawings were not good, and McCord had been twitting him about them. Dick admitted it , saying that he had not been able to collect himself. “You know I can’t do those things very well and I shouldn’t have been sent out on it. That’s Mitchell for you!” Perhaps it angered him to think that he should have been so unfortunate at the very time that I should have been so signally rewarded; anyhow he did not show anything save a generous side to me at the time although latterly I felt that it was the beginning of a of that slight based on his original to me. He complimented me, saying: “You’ve done it this time. I’m glad you’ve made a hit, old man.”
 
That night, however, I was not invited to his room, as I had hoped I should be, although he and Peter went off somewhere—to his room, as I assumed. I myself instead to “Heard in the Corridors.” Then the days settled down into their old routine for me—petty assignments, contrasts between one thing and another. Only one thing held me up, and that was that Hazard now urged me to do a novel with him, a thing which flattered me so much that I felt my career as a great writer was at hand. For had he not done a novel already? I considered it seriously for a few days, arguing the details of the plot with him at the office and after hours, but it came to nothing. Plays rather than novels, as I fancied for some reason, were more in my line, and poems—things which I thought easier to do. Since writing that first poem a month or so before I was busy now from time to time down the most relative to my depressions and dreams, and imaging them to be great verse. Truly, I thought I was to be a great poet, one of the very greatest, and so nothing else really mattered for the time being. Weren’t poets always and lorn, as I was?
 
It was about this time too that, having received the gift of twenty and the raise of five, I began to array myself in manner so ultra-smart, as I thought, but fantastic, really, that I grieve to think that I should ever have been such a fool. Yet to tell the truth, I do not know whether I do or not. A foolish boyhood is as as any. I had now moved into Tenth Street, and fortunately or unfortunately for me (fortunately, I now think) a change in the personnel of the Globe’s editorial staff occurred which had a direct bearing upon my ambitions. A man by the name of Carmichael who did the dramatics on the paper had been called to a better position in Chicago, and the position he had occupied here was therefore temporarily vacant. Hazard was the logical man for the place and should have had it because he had held this position before. He was older and a much better critic. But I, as may be imagined, was in a very appropriate mood for this, having recently been thinking of writing a play, and besides, I was crazy for of any kind. Accordingly the moment I heard of it I was on the alert, eager to make a plea for myself and yet not dreaming that I should ever get it. My sole qualification, as I see it now, was that I was an admirer of the stage and one who, because of his dramatic instincts (as I conceived mine to be), ought to make a good enough critic. I did not know that I was neither old nor cold nor experienced enough to do justice to the art of any one. Yet I should add in all fairness that for the work here required—to write a little two-stick announcement of each new play, mostly favorable, and to prepare a weekly announcement of all the new performances—I was perhaps not so poorly equipped. At any rate, my recent triumph had given me such an excellent opinion of myself, had made me think that I stood so well in the eyes of Mr. McCullagh, that I to try for it. It ............