But, of course, perhaps you can't have everything at once. From the visitors' gallery the spectacle of the Senate in active session is a game more national than baseball. "There he goes!" cries one ardent spectator, pointing to a "home player," so to say, moving down the aisle. "That's him! Gettin' along pretty good, ain't he?" CHAPTER XXVIII FAME: A STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE $10,000! IN PRIZES FOR SHORT STORIES! _You_ have a story. We want to read it. Every human life has one great story in it. Every man, every woman, has at least one story to tell. THIS MEANS YOU! From your experience, from your own heart history, you can draw a tale. You may not know that you can write. But you never know what you can do until you try. We believe there are thousands of unwritten little masterpieces, waiting only for the right encouragement to be produced. Here is our offer---- BENJAMIN KEYESER drew a long breath. "This means you"--there was no doubt about that. These printed words had read his heart. He felt that deep was answering unto deep. A brief résumé of his life passed through Keyes's mind. And he was touched, as never before, by the romance of destiny. He had not contrived to be called up to public charges or employments of dignity or power in the world. When Ol' Necessity had tapped him on the shoulder he had cut his scholastic pursuits short of college, and a family friend, Dr. Nevens, had got him a fifth-rate job in a third-rate business concern. Here it seemed extremely probable that he would spend a good many of his days. By the continued exercise of steadiness of character, diligence, and application, he might hope, as Dr. Nevens by way of encouragement occasionally pointed out, to advance at the rate of a couple of dollars or so every couple of years. Clerkdom hedged him about as divinity doth a king. The city directory rated him, "B. C. Keyes, Clerk." Should he be killed in a railway accident, chosen as a juror, or arrested for homicide, the newspapers would report that B. C. Keyes, a clerk, of 1120 Meredith Street,--etc. There was, he felt when he looked at it fairly, no way out. In the "Americans of Today" magazine articles, men rise from bootblacks to multi-millionaires, but these legends, Keyes felt numbly, had about as much relation to his own life as the hero tales of ancient Greece. His lot was cast in the bottom of a well.