Description

Tales from a Rolltop Desk

125 pages

I take the liberty of dedicating these little stories to you, with affection and respect. They
have all grown, in one mood or another, out of the various life of Grub Street, suggested by
adventures with publishers, booksellers, magazine editors, newspaper men, theatrical
producers, commuters, and poets major and minor. If they have any appeal at all, it must be
as an honest (though perhaps sometimes too jocular) picture of the excitements that gratify
the career of young men who embark upon the ocean of ink, and (let us not forget) those
much-enduring Titanias who consent to share their vicissitudes. You have been the best of
friends and counsellors to many such young men, and I assure you that they look back upon
the time spent under your shrewd and humorous magistracy with special loyalty and
regard. You will understand that in these irresponsible stories no personal identifications
are to be presumed.
I think you remember—I know you do, because you have often charitably chuckled over
the incident—that rather too eager young man who came to call on you one day in
September, 1913, saying that he simply must have a job. And how you, in your inimitable
way, said “Well, what kind of a job would you like best to have around this place?” And he
cried “Yours!” And you justly punctured the creature by saying “All right, go to work and
get it.” (There was more youthful palpitation than intended impertinence in the young
man’s outcry, so he has assured me.) And then, still tremulous with ambition, this
misguided freshman pulled out of his pocket a bulky memorandum on which he had
inscribed his pet scheme for the regeneration and stimulus of the publishing business, and
laid it before you. How hospitably you considered his programme, and how tenderly you
must have smiled, inwardly, at his odd mixture of earnestness and excitement! At any rate,
you set him to work that afternoon, with the assurance that he might have your job as soon
as he could qualify