"Yes," he said, "you're tired--more than you've ever been in your life. You'll feel like a rag by to-morrow, and then I hope you'll take a good rest. But to-day, while you are still way up, I want to talk about your work. Do you mind?"
"Mind? No," I replied, a bit anxiously. "It's just what I'm trying to figure out."
"I know you are. You've figured for months and you've worked yourself thin. I don't mind that, I like it, because I know the reason. But I don't think the result has been good. It seems to me you've been so anxious to get on, because of this large family of yours, that you've shut yourself up and written too fast, you've gotten rather away from life. Shall I go right on?"
"Well," he continued, "you've been using what name you've already made and writing short stories of harbor life."
"That's what the editors want," I said. "When a man makes a hit in one vein of writing they want that and nothing else."
"At this rate you'll soon work out the vein," he said. "I'd like to see you stop writing now, take time to find new ground--and dig."
"There's not an awful lot of time," I remarked.
"My plan won't stop your making money," he replied. "I want you to write less, but get more pay."
"That sounds attractive. How shall I do it?"
"By writing about big men," he said. "I suggest that you try a series of portraits of some of the big Americans and the America they know."
"What's the matter?" he asked with a glance at the door. "Did you hear anything?"
"Yes," I said excitedly. "I heard a stunning title! The America They Know!"
We discussed it all that morning and it appealed to me more and more. Later on, with Eleanore's help (for she grew stronger fast those days), I prevailed upon her father to let me practice upon himself as my first subject. I worked fast, my material right at hand, and within a few weeks I had written the story of those significant incidents out of thirty years of work and wanderings east and west that showed the America he had known, his widening view. I did his portrait, so to speak, with his back to the reader, letting the reader see what he saw. This story I sold promptly, and under the tonic of that success I went into the work with zest and vim.
It filled the next four years of my life. It took the view I had had of the harbor and widened it to embrace the whole land, which I now saw altogether through the eyes of the men at the top.