"
"But don't you think that temperament----"
"Temperament--that's one of the subtlest forms of self-excuse. However, the
place is yours. The salary is a hundred and twenty-five a week--an advance
of about twelve hundred a year, I believe, on your average downstairs. Can
you begin soon?"
"Immediately," said Howard, "if the City Editor is satisfied."
An office boy showed him to his room--a mere hole-in-the-wall with just
space for a table-desk, a small table, a case of shelves for books of
reference, and two chairs. The one window overlooked the lower end of
Manhattan Island--the forest of business buildings peaked with the
Titan-tenements of financial New York. Their big, white plumes of smoke and
steam were waving in the wind and reflecting in pale pink the crimson of
the setting sun.
Howard had his first taste of the intoxication of triumph, his first deep
inspiration of ambition. He recalled his arrival in New York, his timidity,
his dread lest he should be unable to make a living--"Poor boy," they used
to say at home, "he will have to be supported. He is too much of a
dreamer." He remembered his explorations of those now familiar streets--how
acutely conscious he had been that they were paved with stone, walled with
stone, roofed with a stony sky, peopled with faces and hearts of stone.
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