“Oh, nothing much, in one way. I’ve been talking with a young chap who has sent us a manuscript lately. The book’s no good, commercially—a pretty crude performance—but it has some striking descriptive passages about the effects of hunger on the human body and the human mind. They interested me because I thought they showed some traces of imagination. There isn’t much real imagination lying round loose, you know: nothing but the derived and Burbankized variety. So I sent for the fellow. He came running, of course. Hope in his eye, and all that sort of thing. I felt like a brute beast to have to tell him we couldn’t take his book, though I coated the pill as sweetly as I could. “He took it like a Trojan, though I could see that he was holding himself in to keep from crying. He was a mere boy, mind you, and a very shabby and lean one. I noticed that while I talked encouragingly to him, and I finally asked what set him going at such a rate about starvation. I might have known, of course! The kid has been up against it and has been living on quarter rations for I don’t know how many months. There wasn’t an ounce of imagination in his tale, after all: he had been describing his own sensations with decent accuracy—nothing more than that.” “Poor fellow!” I interrupted. “We ought to find him some sort of job. Do you think he’d make good if he had a chance?” Orrington shrugged his heavy shoulders. “I don’t know, I’m sure. I talked to him like a father and uncle and all his elderly relations, and I asked more questions than was polite. He’s in earnest at the moment, anyhow.” “But if he’s actually starving—” I began. Orrington looked at me in his sleepy way. “Oh, he’s had a good feed by this time. You must take me for a cross between a devil-fish and a blood-sucking bat. I could at least afford the luxury of seeing that he shouldn’t try to do the Chatterton act.” Reynolds took a sip of whiskey, then held up his glass to command attention. “Dear, dear!” he said slowly, with the air of settling the case. “It’s a very great pity that young men without resources and settled employment try to make their way by writing. They ought not to be encouraged to do so. Most of them would be better off in business or on their fathers’ farms, no doubt; and the sooner they find their place, the better.” “Still, if nobody made the venture,” I objected, “the craft wouldn’t flourish, would it? I think the question is whether something can’t be done to give this particular young man a show.” “I’ve sent him to Dawbarn,” said Orrington almost sullenly. “He wants a space-filler and general utility man, he happened to tell me yesterday. It’s a rotten job, but it will seem princely to my young acquaintance. I shall watch him. He might make good and pay back my loan, you know.”