TALES FROM A ROLLTOP DESK By Christopher Morley Illustrated By Walter Jack Duncan Garden City, N. Y., And Toronto Doubleday, Page & Company 1921 [Illustration: 0001] [Illustration: 0008] [Illustration: 0009] A LETTER OF DEDICATION TO FRANK NELSON DOUBLEDAY Dear Effendi: I take the liberty of dedicating these little stories to you, with affection and respect. They have all grown, in one mood or another, out of the various life of Grub Street, suggested by adventures with publishers, booksellers, magazine editors, newspaper men, theatrical producers, commuters, and poets major and minor. If they have any appeal at all, it must be as an honest (though perhaps sometimes too jocular) picture of the excitements that gratify the career of young men who embark upon the ocean of ink, and (let us not forget) those much-enduring Titanias who consent to share their vicissitudes. You have been the best of friends and counsellors to many such young men, and I assure you that they look back upon the time spent under your shrewd and humorous magistracy with special loyalty and regard. You will understand that in these irresponsible stories no personal identifications are to be presumed. I think you remember--I know you do, because you have often charitably chuckled over the incident--that rather too eager young man who came to call on you one day in September, 1913, saying that he simply must have a job. And how you, in your inimitable way, said “Well, what kind of a job would you like best to have around this place?” And he cried “Yours!” And you justly punctured the creature by saying “All right, go to work and get it.” (There was more youthful palpitation than intended impertinence in the young man's outcry, so he has assured me.) And then, still tremulous with ambition, this misguided freshman pulled out of his pocket a bulky memorandum on which he had inscribed his pet scheme for the regeneration and stimulus of the publishing business, and laid it before you. How hospitably you considered his programme, and how tenderly you must have smiled, inwardly, at his odd mixture of earnestness and excitement! At any rate, you set him to work that afternoon, with the assurance that he might have your job as soon as he could qualify.