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 conceal 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 mingled feelings by the department: McCord was pleased, of course, but Dick naturally was inclined to be glum. He was conscious of the fact that his drawings were not good, and McCord had been twitting him about them. Dick admitted it frankly, 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 renewal of that slight hostility based on his original opposition 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 applied myself instead to “Heard in the Corridors.” Then the days settled down into their old routine for me—petty assignments, minor 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 scribbling down the most mediocre jingles 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 lone and lorn, as I was?