Читать книгу A Book About Myself онлайн

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Wandering about this building at this time was an old red-faced, red-nosed German, with a protuberant stomach, very genial, dull and apparently unimportant. He was, as I later learned, the real owner of the paper, the major portion of the stock being in his name; and yet, as every one seemed to understand, he never dared pose as such but must slip about, as much overawed as the rest of us. I was a mere underling and new to the place, and yet I could see it. A more apologetic mien and a more obliging manner was never worn by any mortal, especially when he was in the vicinity of McCullagh’s office. His name was Daniel M. Hauser. For the most part he wandered about the building like a ghost, seeming to wish to be somebody or to say something but absolutely without meaning. The short, stout Napoleonic editor ruled supreme.

By degrees I made friends with a number of those that worked here: Bob Hazard; Jock Bellairs, son of the Captain Bellairs who presided over the city zoo; Charlie Benson, and a long list of others whose names escape me now. Of all those on the city staff I was inclined to like Hazard most, for he was a personage, a character, quick, gay, intellectual, literary, forceful. Why he never came to greater literary fame I do not know, for he seemed to have all the flair and feeling necessary for the task. He was an only son of some man who had long been a resident of St. Louis and was himself well known about town. He lived with a mother and sister in southwest St. Louis in a small cottage which always pleased me because of its hominess, and supported that mother and sister in loyal son-like fashion. I had not been long on the paper before I was invited there to dinner, and this in spite of a rivalry which was almost immediately and unconsciously set up between us the moment I arrived and which endured in a mild way even after our more or less allied literary interests had drawn us socially together. At his home I met his sister, a mere slip of a tow-headed girl, whom later on I saw in vaudeville as a headliner. Hazard I encountered years later as a blasé correspondent in Washington, representing a league of papers. He had then but newly completed a wild-West thriller, done in cold blood and with an eye to a quick sale. Assuming that I had influence with publishers and editors, he invoked my aid. I gave him such advice and such letters as I could. But only a few months later I read that Robert Hazard, well-known newspaper correspondent, living with his wife and child in some Washington residence section, had placed a revolver to his temple and ended it all. Why, I have often wondered. He was seemingly so well fitted mentally and physically to enjoy life.... Or is it mental fitness that really kills the taste for life?