THE MAGICAL CHANCE THE MAGICAL CHANCE BY DALLAS LORE SHARP AUTHOR OF “THE LAY OF THE LAND,” “THE HILLS OF HINGHAM,” “EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY,” ETC. [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1923 COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. CONTENTS I. THE MAGICAL CHANCE 1 II. THE RADIUM OF ROMANCE 39 III. THE HUNT FOR “COPY” 69 IV. THE DUTY TO DIG 103 V. THE MAN AND THE BOOK 131 VI. A JANUARY SUMMER 153 VII. AFTER THE LOGGERS 173 VIII. WOODCHUCK LODGE AND LITERATURE 203 THE MAGICAL CHANCE CHAPTER I THE MAGICAL CHANCE THE MAGICAL CHANCE CHAPTER I THE MAGICAL CHANCE “What are you going to say to the college girls?” my pretty niece asked, as we motored down the valley. She was being graduated this spring, and the snowy dogwoods and the purple Judas-trees against the tender hillsides were not so fresh, nor half so full of bloom, as she. But they were gayer far than she. “Don’t tell them, uncle, how wonderful they are! How the world waits for them! Don’t say it, uncle! I have heard that sort of talk for these four years, and here I am with nobody waiting for me; not fitted for anything; nothing to do; and as wonderful--as thirty cents!” Poor thing! A few days before, I had seen an interview with the President of Yale, in which the young writer said he had read in a book that all the great devices had been invented; all the new lands explored; all the great deeds done--all the adventure and romance forever gone from life, and that only bread and butter remain with the odds against a young man’s getting much of the butter. Poor thing! Have I been living fifty years--in America? or fifty cycles in Cathay? I cannot still be young at fifty! nor can I be so old either as modern two-and-twenty! Youth is a dry tree, these days; a sad state--particularly youth bent with the burden of an A.B. degree. Out of my fifty-odd years of existence I have taught college youth for three-and-twenty, and never in all that time have they looked like plain bread and butter to me. If they are not adventure and romance, not better stories, sweeter songs, mightier deeds than any yet recorded, then I am no judge of story matter and the stuff of epic song. But my pretty niece declares that she also knows a shoat when she sees one; and she knows it is just pork. As for the college man of the interview: he was not speaking by the book; out, rather, of the depths of his heart. It is an evil thing to be born young into an old world!