As in a dream, I walked across the street with him to his office and got
the letter which was to make me, half-starved and homeless, rich as
Croesus, it seemed to me. Bob went along, and before I departed from the
school a better home than I could give him was found for him with my
benefactor. I was to bring him the next day. I had to admit that it was
best so. That night, the last which Bob and I spent together, we walked up
and down Broadway, where there was quiet, thinking it over. What had
happened had stirred me profoundly. For the second time I saw a hand held
out to save me from wreck just when it seemed inevitable; and I knew it for
His hand, to whose will I was at last beginning to bow in humility that had
been a stranger to me before. It had ever been my own will, my own way,
upon which I insisted. In the shadow of Grace Church I bowed my head
against the granite wall of the gray tower and prayed for strength to do
the work which I had so long and arduously sought and which had now come to
me; the while Bob sat and looked on, saying clearly enough with his wagging
tail that he did not know what was going on, but that he was sure it was
all right. Then we resumed our wanderings. One thought, and only one, I had
room for. I did not pursue it; it walked with me wherever I went: She was
not married yet. Not yet. When the sun rose, I washed my face and hands in
a dog's drinking-trough, pulled my clothes into such shape as I could, and
went with Bob to his new home. That parting over, I walked down to 23 Park
Row and delivered my letter to the desk editor in the New York News
Association, up on the top floor.
He looked me over a little doubtfully, but evidently impressed with the
early hours I kept, told me that I might try. He waved me to a desk,
bidding me wait until he had made out his morning book of assignments; and
with such scant ceremony was I finally introduced to Newspaper Row, that
had been to me like an enchanted land. After twenty-seven years of hard
work in it, during which I have been behind the scenes of most of the plays
that go to make up the sum of the life of the metropolis, it exercises the
old spell over me yet. If my sympathies need quickening, my point of view
adjusting, I have only to go down to Park Row at eventide, when the crowds
are hurrying homeward and the City Hall clock is lighted, particularly when
the snow lies on the grass in the park, and stand watching them awhile, to
find all things coming right. It is Bob who stands by and watches with me
then, as on that night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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