Fame: A Story Of American Literature

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Title:     Fame: A Story Of American Literature
Author: Robert Cortes Holliday [More Titles by Holliday]

$10,000!
IN PRIZES FOR SHORT STORIES!

You have a story. We want to read it. Every human life has one
great story in it. Every man, every woman, has at least one story
to tell.

THIS MEANS YOU!

From your experience, from your own heart history, you can draw a
tale. You may not know that you can write. But you never know what
you can do until you try. We believe there are thousands of
unwritten little masterpieces, waiting only for the right
encouragement to be produced. Here is our offer----

BENJAMIN KEYESER drew a long breath. "This means you"--there was no doubt about that. These printed words had read his heart. He felt that deep was answering unto deep.

A brief résumé of his life passed through Keyes's mind. And he was touched, as never before, by the romance of destiny. He had not contrived to be called up to public charges or employments of dignity or power in the world. When Ol' Necessity had tapped him on the shoulder he had cut his scholastic pursuits short of college, and a family friend, Dr. Nevens, had got him a fifth-rate job in a third-rate business concern. Here it seemed extremely probable that he would spend a good many of his days. By the continued exercise of steadiness of character, diligence, and application, he might hope, as Dr. Nevens by way of encouragement occasionally pointed out, to advance at the rate of a couple of dollars or so every couple of years. Clerkdom hedged him about as divinity doth a king.

The city directory rated him, "B. C. Keyes, Clerk." Should he be killed in a railway accident, chosen as a juror, or arrested for homicide, the newspapers would report that B. C. Keyes, a clerk, of 1120 Meredith Street,--etc. There was, he felt when he looked at it fairly, no way out. In the "Americans of Today" magazine articles, men rise from bootblacks to multi-millionaires, but these legends, Keyes felt numbly, had about as much relation to his own life as the hero tales of ancient Greece. His lot was cast in the bottom of a well.

And yet,--Keyes had been considered a bright youngster at school; he regarded himself as a rather bright young man now; and sometimes even yet, in wayward, impractical moments, he saw in his mind a picture of himself breaking away from the field (so to say) and coming rounding into the home stretch to bear down on a grandstand wild with applause. He bore about within him a subconscious premonition, as it were, which apparently would not die, that something remarkable was to happen to him sooner or later. An unpleasant circumstance was that it was getting later now all the time. Still the estimate of his worth returned to him by life did not rid him of the belief that he had been originally intended by his Maker for higher things than he had found.

When, occasionally, the gloomy contrast of his life as it was with his career as he conceived it had been meant to be depressed him too untowardly, a young lady whom Keyes called Louise would administer spiritual stimulants.

Louise was a very clever person, and she knew a superior young man when she saw one. She did not care for your common men at all. She was intellectual. She read everything, her friends said. She often told Keyes that he ought to write. She knew, she declared, that he could write better than most of the people who did write.

This idea of writing had, now and then, occurred to Keyes himself. He was rather fond, in his odd hours, of reading periodical fiction, which he liked to discuss with serious people like Louise. Sometimes with the exhilaration occasioned by the reading of a particularly good story, a romantic impulse to express himself welled up in him, and then evaporated. Generally in these instances he wanted to write a kind of story he had just read. He felt the glamour of the life of adventurous tales. He thrilled in response to the note struck in that sort of romance best exemplified, perhaps, in one of his favorites, "The Man Who Would Be King." Or he longed to be like O. Henry, wise with the wisdom of the Town. But there was one sort of story which always ignited in his mind the thought that he really did know a story of his own. This he sometimes positively yearned to tell. This the advertisement had put its finger upon. "Every human life has one great story in it." It was even so. "From your own heart history ..."--Benjamin Keyes felt that emotion which is the conception of a work of art.

* * * * *

He was pregnant with his idea. He rose from his bed betimes. He breathed a strangely fragrant air. He looked at the beautiful world. He wrote. He mentioned his little employment to no one: he felt rather ashamed of it, in fact; but it infatuated him. He encountered some awful tough spots, and at times he almost despaired--but he could not give up. Something within him, which he himself was conscious he did not understand, tortured him to go on. All day long, while at his business, his meals, his shaving, his story turned and twisted and talked in the back of his head. Despair alternated with exultation. At hours there came a gusto to his work; words that he had heard or read, forgotten and never used, came back to him from heaven knows where, and sprang to his pen at the felicitous instance. He felt that his mind was more alert than he remembered it to have ever been; he felt that his eyes were brighter; his hands, his whole right arm, felt strong. He knew as he worked that this was character, and this was sentiment, and this was humor. He was shaken by the respiration of a heady drama. He felt that this--was almost genius! And he was aghast that he had lived such a dull life hitherto when this capacity had been in him.

He possessed little theoretic knowledge of writing; his story grew naturally, like a tree: he was intelligent, and he had a story to tell which must be told. In the matter of technical construction he followed in a general way, intuitively, unconsciously for the most part, without elaborate examination, the form of a short story as he was acquainted with it through his reading of stories. He wandered alone at night, oblivious of anything else, thinking, thinking his story over; and he felt good in his brain and in his heart and in his stomach. He felt virile, elated, full of power, and strangely happy. The joy of creating a thing of art was upon him. Thrills ran down his spine and into his legs; he would grin to himself in the dark streets; and sometimes he laughed aloud. Everything else he neglected. He could not even read the newspapers; he stayed at home two days from business; he worked early and late, and walked up and down, throbbing, meantimes.

The story was almost finished. The story was finished. What would Louise say? Would she think that he ought not to have written, ought not to make public, so intimate a history? Then in the story he had carried things further than they were in fact: the artistic instinct had formally plighted the lovers' troth. He thought of submitting his manuscript without showing it to Louise. Would it not be fine for her to discover the story in print! But Keyes had to read that story to someone or blow up.

* * * * *

His evening with Louise began awkwardly. The pleasant interchange of being did not, as usually so happily it did with Louise, flow naturally along. Keyes was accustomed to feel that with Louise he talked better than before anyone else. He now and then wished that certain other people, upon whom he felt he had not made so favorable an impression as he deserved, could overhear him sometime with Louise. Now, curiously, with her he felt as he had with them: he could not somehow get his real machinery started. Three or four times he determined to embark upon the subject in his mind, and as many times the rising fulness in his chest and the sudden quivering of his heart daunted him. As he looked now at Louise, sitting there before him, the dignity of her as a young woman struck him, and it occurred to him as extraordinary that he could have been so intimate with her. He about concluded to put off his story until another time, at which immediately he felt much relieved.

His gaze wandered about among the familiar objects of the little parlor--the ordinary articles of the family furniture, the photographs on the mantel, the hand-painted plate on the wall,--then rested upon the framed Maxfield Parrish, which Keyes knew, with a glow of pride, to express the superior refinement of Louise's own taste. Keyes shared Louise's interest in art; he knew, and very much admired, the work of Dulac, James Montgomery Flagg, N. C. Wyeth, Arthur Keller, and many others; this was one of the fascinating bonds which united them, in division from a frivolous, material, and unsympathetic world. He glanced again now at the sumptuous Rackham book on the table, which it had been such a delight to him to give her at Christmas; and the revived discussion of æsthetics led him fairly comfortably into the subject of his own entrance into work in that field. His manuscript came out of his pocket; and, straightening up on the edge of his chair, a little nervous again in the still pause that ensued, he cleared his throat, and, in a rather diffident voice, began to read. As he proceeded and knew that his effort found favor, his want of confidence left him. He fell into the swing and color of his work; and the heart of it he tasted like fine wine as he read. In the more moving passages his voice shook a trifle, and tears very nearly came into his eyes; it was all, he felt, so beautiful. When he had concluded there was in Louise's eyes--as he looked up, and saw her sitting, leaning forward with her chin on the back of her hand, her elbow on her knee,--a strange light. It occurred to Keyes that he did not remember ever to have seen a woman's face look exactly that way before. Probably not. This was a light some men never find on land or sea. It does not shine for any man more than once or twice. They sat awhile, these two in the little parlor, and happiness roared through their veins. Louise told Keyes that she had always known that he "had it in him."

Then they arose, and they were near to each other, and their hearts were filled, and beneath the chandelier he moved his arms about her. His lips clasped hers. It was thus as it was in the story.

Keyes emerged from the brightly lighted doorway with Louise beaming tenderly after him. In his blissful abstraction of mind he neglected, on the dark porchway, to turn the corner of the house to the steps; but walked instead, straight ahead, until the world gave way beneath him, and he collapsed with a crash among the young vines.

The next week Louise, who held a position in the "Nickel's Weekly" Circulation Branch office in the Middle West, neatly typed the manuscript on one of the firm's machines. One evening they went together to post the story.... The ancient, imperturbable moon observed this momentous deed.

* * * * *

When Keyes put that manuscript into the mail box, he knew that it would be accepted. He felt this in his bones. He felt it in the soles of his feet and in the hair on his head.

For several days succeeding, a sensuous complacency pervaded young Keyes. In a rich haze he saw himself acclaimed, famous, adored. His nature was ardent, and he had always craved the warmth of approbation; but he had not had it, except from Louise. Now there were moments when, in a picture in his mind, he saw an attractive figure, which he recognized as himself somewhat altered, come jauntily along, amiably smiling, swinging a cane. He had always secretly desired very much to carry a cane, but he had felt uncomfortably that the humbleness of his position in life would make this ridiculous. In his moments of ambition he had hoped, sometimes, that walking-sticks would not go out (to put it so) before he came in. In the background of his mental picture Keyes recognized among the doting multitude the faces of about all of his acquaintances, some brought for the occasion from rather remote places.

Keyes felt a slight wrench of conscience in winking at this poetic liberty taken with realistic probability. When a name occurred to him the physiognomy of whose person was absent, Keyes's sense of probity was smothered, with a slight twinge of pain, by the ardor of his imagination; and place in the press was found for this person, very kindly well up in front, where a good view could be had by him of the celebrity--at this point the celebrity in the delectable vision was observed gaily to light a cigarette. Discernible in the throng, too, were some few whose mean and envious natures writhed, the psychologist in Keyes perceived, at this handsome recognition of the worth of a young man it had once been their wont to snub.

In this balmy temper of mind Keyes got down to business one morning a little late. The humdrum of a business life had begun to be somewhat more irksome than hitherto to Keyes's swelling spirit. He ruminated this morning, as he stood before his tall stool at his ledger, on the curious ill-adjustment of a universe so arranged that one of his capacity for finer things could remain so unsuspected of the world about him, and the rich value of his life to some unmeaning task-work be allowed to give. A sudden electric buzzing beneath his high desk signalled him that his presence was desired by his chief. "What now?" he thought, a little tremulously and a little irritably, as he went: he had been caught up on several slips lately. He paused respectfully in the private office doorway. Mr. Winder, from his swivel-chair, flashed up his white moustache very straight at Keyes. "Sit down," he directed. The suavity which was his habit was quite absent. Keyes felt the presence in the air of a good deal of masculine firmness.

"This," said Mr. Winder, his eye steadily on Keyes, "is a place of business. It is not a gentleman's club. Now, I want you to take a brace. That will do."

As Keyes took up his pen again and began to write, "By merchandise," his breast was full with resentment: a sense of the real integrity of his nature welled up in him. His mind rapidly generated the divers manly replies he wished, with an intensity amounting to pain, he had thought of a moment before. He saw himself, now exasperatingly too late, saying with frank honesty to Mr. Winder:

"I realize that I have of late been a little delinquent. But (with some eloquence) it has always been my intention to be, and I believe in the main I have been, a faithful and conscientious employee. I shall not be found wanting again."

But here he was a rebuked culprit. He felt the degradation of servitude. He experienced sharply that violent yearning so familiar to all that are employed everywhere, to be able to go in and tell Mr. Winder to go to the devil. And though he felt at bottom the legitimacy, in the business ethic, of Mr. Winder's attitude, he also felt forlornly the coldness of the business relation, the brutal authority of worldly power, and its conception of his insignificance. And he was stung at the moral criminality, as he felt it to be, of a situation which placed such a man as Mr. Winder over such a nature as his own; Mr. Winder he did not suppose had read a book within the last ten years.

As, at that hour which sets the weary toiler free, in the gathering dusk Keyes stood on the curb amid the hurrying throng homeward bound,--oh! how he longed for that establishment in the eyes of men which the success of his story would bring him. Oh, when would he hear! As he bowled along in the crowded trolley the thought stole through him, until it amounted almost to a conviction, that the great letter awaited him at home now. He could hardly bear the tedium of the short journey. Restlessly he turned his evening paper.

In him had developed of late a great interest in authors; he peered between the pages, a little sheepishly, at the column, "Books and Their Makers." He read that Mr. So and So, the author of "This and That," was a young man thirty years of age. Instantly he reflected that he himself was but twenty-seven. This was encouraging! He had formed a habit recently of contrasting at once any writer's age with his own. If he learned that Mr. Galsworthy, whose books were much advertised but which he had not read, was forty-something, he wanted to know how old he had been when he wrote his first book. Then he counted up the number of books between that time--comparing his age at that time with his own--and now. He was absorbed in the literary gossip of the day. That Myra Kelly had been a schoolteacher, that Gertrude Atherton lived in California, that Mr. Bennett had turned thirty before he published his first book, that such a writer was in Rome, or that some other one was engaged on a new work said to be about the Russian Jews,--he found very interesting. He read in his newspaper the publishers' declaration that Maurice Hewlett's new creation recalled Don Quixote, Cyrano, d'Artagnan, Falstaff, Bombastes Furioso, Tartarin, Gil Blas. His notions concerning the characters of this company were somewhat vague; but he was stirred with an ambition to create some such character, too.

On leaving the car whom should he see but Dr. Nevens. They walked along together. Dr. Nevens inquired about the business. A bad year, he surmised, for trade. Trade! Keyes felt his heart thumping with the temptation to confide the adventures of his literary life; which, indeed, he had found exceedingly difficult to keep so much to himself. But his position gave him clairvoyance: he divined that no sort of ambition receives from people in general so little respect, by some curious idiosyncrasy of the human mind, as literary aspiration. With what coarse and withering scorn had an intimation--which had escaped him--that he had sought to give some artistic articulation to his ideas been met by Pimpkins the other day at the office!

The personality of Dr. Nevens, however, suggested a more sympathetic attitude, by reason of the dentist's cultivation. Dr. Nevens was spoken of as a "booklover." He had a "library"--it was, he implied, his bachelor foible--the cornerstone of which was a set of the Thistle edition of Stevenson that he had bought by subscription from an agent. (Keyes had thought it odd one day that Dr. Nevens had not cut the leaves.) And "the doctor" was fond of speaking familiarly of Dickens, and gained much admiration by his often saying that he should like--had he time--to read through "Esmond" once every year. Here, Keyes felt, would be spiritual succor.

But Keyes quickly learned that he was quite in a different case from the author of "Esmond." Dr. Nevens was kind, but pitying.

"Only one out of hundreds, thousands," he said, "ever comes to anything."

It did not occur to him, Keyes thought, as within the range of remotest possibility that he, Keyes, might be one of these. Then came the doctor's reason.

"You do not know anything," he said paternally, "anything at all."

Keyes realized, with some bitterness, that this world is not an institution existing for the purpose of detecting and rewarding inner worth. He had known enough to write his story, he guessed. With some flare of rage, he felt that simply unsupported merit is rather frowned upon, as tending by comparison to cast others possibly not possessing so much of it somewhat into the shade. He had a savage thought that when he was Dr. Nevens's age he would not be a country dentist. He saw the intense egoism of mankind.

Dr. Nevens was determined to show a young man who had betrayed a consciousness of superiority of grain, his place--economically and socially. The selfish jealousy of the world!

* * * * *

His letter had not come. There was only a package from Louise--a copy of "Book Talk," containing a marked article on "Representative American Story Tellers"; from this, after dinner, Keyes imbibed most of the purported facts about Booth Tarkington. Then he went to bed to sleep through the hours until the return of the postman.

The next evening still there was no letter. Keyes's spirit was troubled. He sought the solace of solitude in the quiet, shadowed streets. A reaction was succeeding his rosy complacency! Doubts pierced his dissolving confidence. Was his story so good, after all? Somehow, as he looked back at it now, it seemed much less strong than it had before. He felt a sort of sinking in his stomach. A sickening suspicion came to him that, perhaps, it was absurd. Maybe it was very silly. In a disconnected way certain remarks and passages in it came back to him now as quite questionable. Yes, they sounded pretty maudlin. He squirmed within with mortification as a recollection of these passages passed through his mind. He hoped his story would never get into print. A fear that it might nauseated him. Then he was suffused with a sensation of how little he amounted to. He felt, with a sense of great weakness, the precariousness of his job. A horror came over him that he might lose it. He wished he did not know Louise, who expected things of him. He felt how awkward it was so to fail her. In the position he had got himself into with her, how he had laid himself open to humiliating exposure! Oh, why had he ever sought her? He wished he did not know anybody well. He was an ass and he would never come to anything. He felt the futility of his life. Why could he not slink away somewhere and live out his feeble existence unobserved? As he got into bed he felt that very easily he could cry.

* * * * *

The August
FAVORITE MAGAZINE
This number contains
The Great Prize Story
by
BENJAMIN CECIL KEYES
GET IT!!

* * * * *

... Keyes stood before a downtown news-stand. Hurrying pedestrians bumped into him. An irascible character or two, thus impeded, glared back at him--what was the matter with the fellow! Did he think there was nobody but himself in the world?

B. C. Keyes walked home to the sound of a great orchestra reverberating through him. He could not tolerate the thought of subduing himself to the confinement of a car. He needed movement and air.

It had come, his great letter, a few weeks before. At his sitting down to dinner his mother had given him the envelope. The Favorite Magazine--these words had seemed to him to be printed in the upper left-hand corner; it had struck him that perhaps the strain on his nerves of late had so deranged his mind that he now saw, as in a mirage, what was not. "Benjamin C. Keyes, Esq."--so ran the address. Keyes in his dizziness noted this point: people had not customarily addressed him as esquire. Then, for the first time in his life, he held in his hand a substantial check payable to his own name--wealth! Courteous and laudatory typewritten words danced before his burning eyes.

He felt, though in a degree an hundred times intensified, as though he had smoked so much tobacco, and drunk so much coffee, he could not compose himself to eat, or read a paper, or go to bed, or stay where he was; but must rush off somewhere else and talk hysterically. He got through his meal blindly. He could not explain--just yet--to his mother: he felt he could not control the patience necessary to begin at the beginning and construct a coherent narrative.... He must go to Louise who already understood the preliminary situation.

It had occurred to Keyes on his hurried, stumbling way thither that the whole thing was unbelievable, and that he must be quite insane. After he had pushed the bell, an interminable time seemed to elapse before his ring was answered. As he stood there on the porch he felt his flesh palpitating. A terrible fear came over him that Louise might not be at home.... Louise said, when her frenzy had somewhat abated, that she had always known that he "had it in him." She told him there was now "a future" before him.... Keyes had determined to go on about his business as though nothing unusual had occurred; then when the story appeared, to accept congratulations with retiring modesty. Before noon the next day he had told three people; by night, seven.

So, going over it all again, Keyes arrived at home, to learn that--"What do you think?" His mother said "a reporter" had been at the house; an occurrence--quite unprecedented in Mrs. Keyes's experience--which had thrown her into considerable agitation. This public official she had associated in her confusion with a policeman. He had, however, treated her as a personage of great interest. He told her "there was nothing to be ashamed of." He drew from her trembling lips some account of her son's life, and requested a photograph.

Next day the dean of local newspapers, vigilant in patriotism, printed an extended article on the "state's new writer." And in an editorial entitled "The Modern Athens" (which referred to Keyes only by implication) the paper affirmed again that Andiena was "by general consent the present chief centre of letters in America." It recapitulated the names of those of her sons and daughters whose works were on the counters of every department store in the land. It concluded by saying: "The hope of a people is in its writers, its chosen ones of lofty thought, its poets and prophets, who shall dream and sing for it, who shall gather up its tendencies and formulate its ideals and voice its spirit, proclaiming its duties and awakening its enthusiasm." Keyes read this, as he took it to be, moving and eloquent tribute to his prize story with feelings akin to those experienced, very probably, by Isaiah.

Keyes received an ovation at "the office." The humility of Pimpkins's admiration was abject. Keyes perceived the commanding quality of ambition--when successful. Miss Wimble, the hollow-breasted cashieress, regarded him with sheep's-eyes. Even Mr. Winder, in passing, congratulated him upon his "stroke of luck."

Wonders once begun, it seemed, poured. Two letters awaited him that evening. One from the editor of The Monocle Magazine. The Monocle Magazine, as Louis said, "think of it!" The editor of this distinguished institution spoke of his "pleasure" in reading Mr. Keyes's "compelling" story; he begged to request the favor of the "offer" of some of Keyes's "other work." By way of a fraternal insinuation he mentioned that he was a native of Andiena, himself. "Most of us are," was his sportive comment. The "Consolidated Sunday Magazines, Inc.," wrote with much business directness to solicit "manuscript," at "immediate payment on acceptance at your regular rates for fiction of the first class."

* * * * *

The extraordinary turn of events in Keyes's life brought him visitors as well as letters. Dr. Nevens called, benignly smiling appreciation. His impression appeared to be that he had not been mistaken in giving Keyes his support. Of more constructive importance, however, was the turning up of Mr. Tate, who had been Keyes's instructor in "English" at the Longridge High School. A slender, pale, young man, with a bald, domed forehead "rising in its white mass like a tower of mind," Mr. Tate was understood to nourish a deep respect for literature. He had contributed one or two very serious and painstaking "papers" on the English of Chaucer (not very well understood by Keyes at the time), to "Poet-Lore"; and had edited, with notes, several "texts"--one of "The Lady of the Lake," with an "introduction," for school use. He reverenced, he now made evident, the "creative gift," as he designated it; which, he realized, had been denied him. He had come to pay homage to a vessel of this gift, his former pupil, now illustrious.

With the hand of destiny Mr. Tate touched a vital chord. Self-assertion; to be no longer an unregarded atom in the mass of those born only to labor for others; to find play for the mind and the passion which, by no choice of his own, distinguished him from the time slave: this was now Keyes's smouldering thought. Mr. Tate, from his conversancy with the literary situation, reported that there never was in the history of the world such a demand for fiction as now, and that "the publishers" declared there was not an overproduction of good fiction. Editors, Mr. Tate said, were eager to welcome new talent. He strongly encouraged Keyes to adopt what he spoke of as the "literary life." In fact, he seemed to consider that there was no alternative. And, indeed, already in Keyes's own idea of his future he saw himself eventually settled somewhere amid the Irvin-Cobbs, the Julian-Streets, the Joseph-Hergesheimers, and other clever people whose society would be congenial to him.

For the present he cultivated his ego, as became a literary light; and now, with Mr. Tate's assistance, he began to devote the time at his command to preparation for his life's work, to study. Mr. Tate was ardent to be of service; he felt that he had here connected himself with literary history in the making. The great need for Keyes, he felt, was education. The creative genius, Mr. Tate said, could not be implanted; but he felt that this other he could supply. He recommended the patient study of men and books. He thought that what Keyes needed in especial was "technical" knowledge; so he went at that strong. Maupassant, Mr. Tate said, was the great master of the short story. Keyes began his evening studies in English translations of Maupassant.

The galling yoke of his business life was becoming well-nigh unbearable. His soul was in ferment. If only he did not have to get up to hurry every morning down to that penitentiary, there to waste his days, he could get something done. That sapped his vitals. And he was tortured by a flame--to do, to read, study, create, grow, accomplish! He was expanding against the walls of his environment. God! could he but burst them asunder, and leap out!

Mr. Tate had a high idea of a thing which he spoke of as "style." In elucidation of this theme he suggested perusal of essays and treatises by DeQuincey, Walter Pater, and Professor Raleigh, He felt also that the "art of fiction" should be mastered by his protégé. So Keyes pitched into examinations of this recondite subject by Sir Walter Besant, Marion Crawford, R. L. Stevenson, and Anthony Trollope. Keyes realized that he had not realized before what a lot there was to writing. Mr. Tate purchased out of his slender means as a present, "Success in Literature," by G. H. Lewes. He unearthed a rich collection in titles of books the consumption of which literature would be invaluable to one in training for the literary profession. An admirable bibliography, this list, of the genre which was Keyes's specialty:--"The Art of Short Story Writing," "Practical Short Story Writing," "The Art of the Short Story," "The Short Story," "Book of the Short Story," "How to Write a Short Story," "Writing of the Short Story," "Short Story Writing," "Philosophy of the Short Story," "The Story-Teller's Art," "The Short Story in English," "Selections from the World's Greatest Short Stories," "American Short Stories," "Great English Short-Story Writers." In the reading room of the public library Keyes followed a series of articles in "Book Talk" on the "Craftsmanship of Writing." He advanced in literary culture, under Mr. Tate's zealous lead, to consideration of "the novel," its history and development. And, too, to the drama, its law and technique. His head was filled with the theory of dénouements, "moments," rising actions, climaxes, suspended actions, and catastrophes. At times he had an uneasy feeling that all these things did not much help him to think up any new stories of his own. But Mr. Tate said "that" would "come."

* * * * *

And wealth and fame were even now at hand. The promoters of the great prize contest advertising dodge had not been at fault in business acumen; the winning story returned ample evidence of its popular appeal. It was akin to the minds of the "peepul." The Favorite Magazine was sold during August by enterprising newsboys on trolley cars. That great public whose literature is exclusively contemporaneous,--whose world of letters is the current Saturday Mail-Coach, the All-people's Magazine, the Purple Book, the Nothing-But-Stories, the Modiste, The Swift Set, Jones's--the Magazine that Entertains, Brisk Stories, Popularity, and the Tip-Top,--discussed the big features on front porches. Keyes's story even attracted the interest of those who seldom read anything. A number of letters from persons of that impulsive class which communicates its inward feelings to authors personally unknown were forwarded to Keyes from his publishers. A young lady resident in St. Joe, Michigan, wrote to say that she thought the scene where the boat upsets was the "grandest thing ever written."

Imagine a man like Keyes sitting his days away on an office stool. His mother, however, could not "see" his resigning his position. His "father had always" ... and so forth. Keyes foamed within. What a thing--woman's maddening narrowness! At the office Keyes's situation grew, in subtle ways, more and more oppressive. His position appeared to become equivocal. Mr. Winder seemed to make a point of increasing exactness. Keyes felt a disposition in authority to put down any subordinate uppishness of feeling possibly occasioned by doings outside the line of business. And he became conscious, too, of a curious estrangement from his associates there. They, on their side, Pimpkins in especial, seemed to feel that he felt he was too good for them. And, in truth, he did. The mundane aims of those around him got on his nerves. Their commonplace thoughts irritated him. They were common natures. But, with fierce secret joy, Keyes knew that an event was approaching which promised, would command, deliverance from it all.

Fall came. And the Favorite Publishing Company bound up the prize story as a "gift book" for the holiday trade. Claud Clarence Chamberlain, the well-known illustrator and creator of the famous "Picture-Hat Girl," was commissioned to make the decorations. These were done with much dash in highly colored crayon and popular sentiment. One was printed on the paper jacket of the book, with the title in embossed letters. The advertisement pronounced the work altogether "an exquisite piece of book-making." It declared the production the "daintiest gift of the season," and reminded "people of culture and refinement" that there was "no present like a book."

Indeed a hero is not without fame in his own country. The Stanton-Merritt bookstore on Capital Street arranged a window display of about a ton of "Will Rockwell Makes Good," with one of Mr. Chamberlain's original illustrations, framed, in the centre. A monster advertising banner was flung across the front of the store above the entrance and windows. Just inside, a pyramid breast-high was built of the books, beneath an artistic piece of work--a hanging board upon which was burned in old English letters: "'A good book is the precious life blood of a Master Spirit'--Milton." A lady who informed the salesman that she thought "books" were "just fine," bought twenty copies for holiday distribution. She inquired if there was not a discount on that number purchased.

Drugged with triumph, they returned together Saturday night from the exhibition "down town"; and, in the now historic little parlor again, Louise wept upon the shoulder of her affianced. Yes; they were formally engaged. Keyes was not without a sensation that the situation was rather chaotic. But destiny seemed to close in on him and bear him on.

The reviewers got on the job. And they were there with the goods. Statements from a few typical press notices follow. "An absorbing story," said the Topeka Progressive, "throbbing with optimism." "Mr. Keyes strikes a new note in this unusual production; vivid, dramatic,"--San Francisco Lookout. "A story of vivid and compelling interest," one critic declared. "A delightful story, rich in heart throbs," was one good one. One reviewer said, "Here we have a real love story, a tale of love, tender and true, delightfully narrated. There are so many fine, tender passages in the episode of these two, who live just for each other, that reading the little book is like breathing strong, refreshing air." "The creator of 'Will Rockwell," said one paper, "has here written a new idyl of America." "An inspiring picture," said another. One very fine critique said: "Once in awhile, possibly once in a lifetime, there arises before us a writer of fiction whose genius is undeniable the instant it greets us." When Keyes read this, quoted in his publisher's latest newspaper advertisement, he knew that he had found his work in the world. And reasoning from his experience, he saw before him a calling that would be ever a noble intoxication of the soul, a kind that would know naught of headaches or remorse.

But perhaps the best of all the critical dicta was this: "Written," it declared, "with blood and tears and fire." Very impressive was the number of times that were used such adjectives as "big," "vital," "absorbing," "compelling," "remarkable," "insistent," and "virile." "Optimism," it developed too, was the supreme merit of fiction. One of the arresting terms employed was "economy of means."

There were, it is true, a few dissenting voices from the chorus of unrestrained praise, chiefly from certain notoriously dull, conservative, killjoy journals. The New York Evening Postman said: "This somewhat amateurish little essay in fiction seems to be the product of an untutored sincerity. In this, its sincerity, it is not without a degree of vigor. We doubt, however, whether the author can repeat the performance." And that irrepressibly ribald organ, the New York Beam, could not forbear its customary jocular sport. Its smart review of this little classic (as one bookseller already pronounced it) began: "Hooray for 'Will'! Hooray also for 'Mabel'! They are the real simegoozlia."

* * * * *

"Don't you think you could write something now, dear?" inquired Mrs. Keyes, who did not see how scholarship pure and simple was, so to say, to move the boat.

This idea of writing something now had indeed occurred to Keyes; but somehow he had not been able to think of anything in particular to write. So he went on with his studies, at the same time keeping an eye open for available material, characters, and plots.

"Surely you can write something, Ben, that we could get some money for," said Louise. A wife, after all, is only a woman, with a mind fitted to petty things, such as groceries, family washings, clothing, and divers household bills. It is irritating to a man of lofty mind who night and day is racking his brain for an idea, to be prodded on in this fashion. Keyes ground his teeth and bore it; he reflected that an author's life is frequently a battle with mediocrity. Perhaps he was mistaken as to where lay the mediocrity with which he battled.

He fretted and worried and at length sat himself down to write without an inspiration. He bethought himself of Trollope's example to literary aspirants, and tried to grind out two hundred and fifty words every fifteen minutes for three hours a day. He couldn't write twenty. He kept doggedly on. He could not make his characters act or talk--the talk was the most hopeless thing of all. He couldn't, as once he had done, cry over them. Sometimes, in the stillness of the night with his clock ticking before him, he almost thought that he had regained for a moment a tithe of the power he once had; but in the morning when he reviewed his work he admitted that he had been sadly mistaken. Now doubts haunted his soul; even as he wrote another consciousness within not thus employed whispered of his impotency. Fact is, Keyes had not at all the creative gift.

He struggled through a number of stories, some better and some worse. When he mailed these it was with a faltering, doubting heart. Something with a weak action away in his interior told him that they would not be accepted.

Keyes got thinner in flesh, more distressed in spirit, and poorer in this world's goods as time went on. Sometimes he felt like an imposter and was ashamed to face his wife; then he reread his press notices and a fever to do something shook him. But a man cannot support himself and his wife on a fever to do something. Benjamin Cecil Keyes could not understand the thing: if he had literary genius why couldn't he write? If he had not, how then had he written? To sit in full view of one's wife day after day pretending to be interested in a book when the bill-collector calls; and to be tormented all the time by a desire to do something and not to be able to do it, or know when, if ever, one will be able; and to be ashamed and afraid to tell one's wife this; but to be compelled to be there, or to run away, or to hang one's self--this is a situation more than uncomfortable.

A thousand times Keyes decided to roll up his sleeves and do something else--engage in any profitable employment; and a thousand times he decided not to--just yet. A man often exists in this way until he gets quite to the end of the string where the wolf is.

"That was an accident, Louise," said Keyes sadly one day. "I find I can't write."

Keyes was mistaken again. No fine thing ever was made by accident. Keyes managed to write that story because its theme was the most interesting incident in his life; because it appealed to him more strongly than anything else had in his whole experience; because he was thoroughly familiar with the life and the people he featured in his story; because he was absolutely sincere in his sympathies, appreciation, and emotions here; he had no ideals set way beyond his power, no aping tendencies after an effective style, no attention distracted by an ill-digested knowledge of mechanical construction. The structure, and the style simply came, probably because--and finally he managed to write that story because--he was keyed up to it.

A domestic woman often has a wretchedly unworshipful view of art and fame. Keyes's confession did not kill Louise. I suppose he expected her to go back to her parents in high dudgeon as one who had been grossly swindled.

"Do you care if you can't write?" she said, after a moment's silence. "Just think how nice you are--how much nicer you were before you tried to write! And how it has worried you!"

Keyes got a job as a collector for a mercantile house. "My health demands outdoor employment," he told his acquaintances.

* * * * *

Sometimes, alone with his lamp after the day's confounded drudgery, Keyes got out the old magazine and reread his forgotten story.

[The end]
Robert Cortes Holliday's essay: Fame: A Story Of American Literature

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