real thing! Would you cash it or have it framed? The 'Nassau National.' Do you suppose they're good for it?"
The others were smiling doubtfully, between pleasure in his success and envy of it. He understood the expression. "There's millions where that came from," he said, "and all you need is a pen to dig out some. Why don't you get after it? Why don't you write up the adventures of a poor but honest young man looking for a job in a great, big city, eh?"
There was no reason why they did not—except, perhaps, that they could not.
"Give ovah!" Pittsey retorted. "Any man can write 'if he only abandons his mind to it.' Get a pad of fresh white paper and let yourself go. You might as well be doing something while you're not refusing applications for your valuable services down town. Try it."
They tried it. Conroy gave it up after a morning spent biting the end of his pen-handle, his face as blank as his paper; he was, apparently, too home-sick and dispirited to have a thought of anything else. Don persisted, tutored by Pittsey, who groaned in private over the stilted English and the philosophic stodginess of his pupil's work. "Put some ginger into it," he counselled. "This is as tame as if you'd written it for old Cotton. A newspaper doesn't want a 'not-only-but-also' thesis on the subject. It wants some facts. If you haven't any make some up. You might have written this without ever seeing New York or an employment agency. Aren't some of them fakes—some of these agencies?"
