"Not so fast! Not so fast!" I replied, admiring his courage and moved by his contempt of the editorial and book publishing conditions in America. He was so young and raw and savage in his way, quite animal, and yet how interesting! There was something as fresh and clean about him as a newly plowed field or the virgin prairies. He typified for me all the young unsophisticated strength of my country, but with more "punch" than it usually manifests, in matters intellectual at least. "Now, don't get excited, and don't snarl," I cooed. "I know what you say is true. They don't really want much of what you have to offer. I don't. Working for some one else, as most of us do, for the dear circulation department, it's not possible for us to get very far above crowd needs and tastes. I've been in your position exactly. I am now. Where do you come from?" He told me--Missouri--and some very few years before from its state university. "And what is it you want to do?" "What's that to you?" he replied irritatingly, with an ingrowing and obvious self-conviction of superiority and withdrawing as though he highly resented my question as condescending and intrusive. "You probably wouldn't understand if I told you. Just now I want to write enough magazine stuff to make a living, that's all." "Dear, dear!" I said, laughing at the slap. "What a bravo we are! Really, you're interesting. But suppose now you and I get down to brass tacks. You want to do something interesting, if you can, and get paid for it. I rather like you, and anyhow you look to me as though you might do the things I want, or some of them. Now, you want to do the least silly thing you can--something better than this. I want the least silly stuff I can get away with in this magazine--genuine color out of the life of New York, if such a thing can be published in an ordinary magazine. Roughly, here's the kind of thing I want," and I outlined to him the probable policy of the magazine under my direction. I had taken an anæmic "white-light" monthly known as _The Broadway_ (!) and was attempting to recast it into a national or international metropolitan picture. He thawed slightly. "Well, maybe with that sort of idea behind it, it might come to something. I don't know. It's _possible_ that you may be the one to do it." He emphasized the "possible." "At any rate, it's worth trying. Judging by the snide editors and publications in this town, no one in America wants anything decent." His lip curled. "I have ambitions of my own, but I don't expect to work them out through the magazines of this town; maybe not of this country. I didn't know that any change was under way here."