Pulitzer, hours during which we
had to supply an incessant stream of information, or run through a
carefully condensed novel or play.
Under such circumstances an hour for lunch or dinner had to be accepted
as an unfortunate necessity; but when it came, as it often did, to an
hour and a half or two hours, the encroachment on our time became a
serious matter.
At about nine o'clock Mr. Pulitzer went to the library. One of the
secretaries accompanied him and read aloud until, on the stroke of ten,
Dunningham came and announced that it was bedtime.
An extraordinary, and in some respects a most annoying feature of this
final task of the day, viewed from the secretary's standpoint, was that
from nine to ten, almost without cessation, Mr. Mann, the German
secretary, played the piano in the dining saloon, the doors
communicating with the library being left open.
In a direct line the piano cannot have been more than ten feet from the
reader's chair; and the strain of reading aloud for an hour against a
powerful rendering of the most vigorous compositions of Liszt, Wagner,
Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin was a most trying ordeal for voice, brain
and nerves. Mr. Pulitzer could apparently enjoy the music and the
reading at the same time.
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