_March 2._ The truth of the difference of quality between the business man and the scholar was quickly brought home to me. On the last evening of my visit, Mr. Blodgett revealed the reason for his latest kindness. “I got you here,” he explained, “to look you over and see what you were fit for, thinking I might work you in somewhere. No,” he continued, as he saw the questioning hopefulness on my face, “you wouldn’t do in business. You’ve got a sight too much conscience and sympathy, and a sight too little drive. All business is getting the best of somebody else, and you’re the kind of chap who’d let a fellow up just because you’d got him down.” Seeing the sadness in my face, for I knew too well he had fathomed me, he added kindly, “Don’t get chicken-hearted over what I say. It’s easy enough to outwit a man; the hard thing is not to do it. I’d go out of the trade to-morrow, if it weren’t for the boss and Agnes, for I get tired of the meanness of the whole thing. But they want to cut a figure, and that isn’t to be done in this town for nothing. I’ll find something for you yet that sha’n’t make you sell your heart and your soul as well as your time.” I was too full of my love and my purpose, however, for this to discourage me. The moment my determination to remain in New York was taken, I wrote to Jastrow, Humzel, and others of my German friends, telling them that for business reasons I had decided to be known as Rudolph Hartzmann, and asking if they would stretch friendship so far as to give me letters in that name to such American publishers and editors as they knew. Excepting Jastrow, they all responded with introductions so flattering that I was almost ashamed to present them, and he wrote me that he had not offered my books for sale, and begged me to reconsider my refusal of the professorship. He even offered, if I would accept the appointment, to divide with me his tuition fees, and suggested that his own advancing years were a pledge that his position would erelong be vacant for me to step into. It almost broke my heart to have to write him that I could not accept his generous offer. In July I received a second letter from him, most touching in its attempt to keep back the grief he felt, but yielding to my determination. He sent me many good introductions, and submitted a bid for my library from a bookseller; but knowing the books to be worth at least double the offer, I held the sale in abeyance.