Ray Sanford strolled in, as fresh-complexioned as an Englishman. He was, they said, preparing a series of articles on the negro problem. And I met a little, bustling, sharp-eyed man, with much of the feminine about him,--his face lifted as if on an intuitive intellectual scent.... Carruthers Heflin ... he wore a close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard, like a stage-doctor. He was busy with a series of articles to be entitled, _Babylons of To-day_ ... exposing the corruption of our modern American cities. I spoke to them of my projected trip to Europe. "I think you're foolish to run off to Europe just at this time in your life. Now is the time you should establish yourself here. Besides, Jarvis Mackworth has written us that you're writing a book while Derek, the Chicago millionaire, stakes you." "Yes, that's true. But couldn't I write it in Europe as well as here?" "You'd find too many distractions." "Where would you go first?" asked Clara Martin. "Paris!" "That would be absolutely fatal for a young man of your disposition. You need to sit quiet and write for a few years ... you've been over the map too much already." "Baxter has just been in here ... he's writing us a sensational novel exposing society. He spoke to me about you," Lephil remarked,--"said he wished we'd put a tag on you and ship you down to his Eden colony." There was a pause. Miss Martin thoughtfully tapped her forehead with a pencil. "I don't think it would be good for Johnnie to go down to Eden and put up with Penton," she interjected, "they're too much alike." "Ally Merton is in New York," Galusha Siddon informed me. "He's working on the _Express_. He wants you to run down and see him." * * * * * Merton had come to New York the year before, to work on the _Express_. Mackworth had gotten him the job. Ally was as meticulously dressed as ever. His eyes swept me from head to foot, with an instinctive glance of appraisal, as he shook hands. "Come on up on the roof. The paper wants a photo of you ... to go with a story I'm writing about you." * * * * * I rather resented all my friends' way of talking to me, as if I were a child to be discussed, ordered about, and disposed of. But I humoured them by playing up to their patronising spirit ... even playing horse with them continually on the sly, and having lots of fun that they didn't suspect. * * * * * The next morning I was in the office of the _Independent_, visiting with the literary editor, good old Dr. William Hayes Ward. He was a man of eighty years ... a scholar in English and the Greek and Latin classics.... Once, when on a vacation he had written me that, as pastime, he had read the whole of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ over again. In the Greek, of course.