Here then were the leaders in the crowd to which I had been admitted by virtue of a hasty sketch of Napoleon Bonaparte done on order.
Thank God I had sense enough to realize that here were three rare personalities, and that to miss such associations would be sheer stupidity. Also to know that I was an unusually lucky woman to be accepted.
Then there was the magazine they were making. There was something youthful, gay, natural about it which captivated me. Often, too, it achieved a most precious thing. Mr. Phillips called it a “lift.” To be youthful, gay, natural with a “lift”—that was an achievement.
And then I found the place so warmly and often ridiculously human. Mr. McClure was incapable of standing up before a hard-luck story, with the result that he brought into that overcrowded office a string of derelicts ranging from autocratic scrub ladies to indigent editors—brought them in and left them for J. S. P. to place. But J. S. P. was not far behind in his sympathy for those who were down and out. I watched him more than once rescue an author who perhaps out of sheer discouragement had taken to drink and landed in jail. Mr. Phillips saw that he was bailed out, his debts paid, work given him. I never ceased to wonder that these two men loaded with work and responsibility should seemingly consider it part of their daily job to rescue the wastrel and the disheartened.
There was reason enough for me to stay with _McClure’s_.
The Napoleon sketch had not been finished before Mr. McClure was urging me into a new job—not writing this time, but editing, editing according to his recipe. “Out with you—look, see, report.” Abraham Lincoln was the subject. My heart fell. “If you once get into American history,” I told myself, “you know well enough that will finish France. It will also finish your determination to solve the woman question and determine the nature of revolutions. They will go the way of the microscope and your search for God. Are you to spend your life running, now here, now there, never follow a path to its end?” Or was I taking my ambitions too seriously? It seemed probable. However, I was to have five thousand a year if I went along. There was no question in my mind but it was my duty to earn that money.
