It will be readily understood that with his keen and analytic mind Mr.
Pulitzer very soon discovered exactly what kind of work was best suited
to the capacities of each of his secretaries. Thus to Mr. Paterson was
assigned the reading of history and biography, to Mr. Pollard, a Harvard
man and the only American on the personal staff during my time, novels
and plays in French and English, to Herr Mann German literature of all
kinds. Thwaites was chiefly occupied with Mr. Pulitzer's correspondence,
and Craven with the yacht accounts, though they, as well as myself, had
roving commissions covering the periodical literature of France,
Germany, England, and America.
This division of our reading was by no means rigid; it represented Mr.
Pulitzer's view of our respective spheres of greatest utility; but it
was often disturbed by one or another of us going on sick leave or
falling a victim to the weather when we were at sea.
Subject to such chances Pollard always read to Mr. Pulitzer during his
breakfast hour, and Mann during his siesta, while the reading after
dinner was pretty evenly divided between Pollard, Paterson, and myself.
If Mr. Pulitzer once got it into his head that a particular man was
better than any one else for a particular class of work nothing could
reconcile him to that man's absence when such work was to be done.
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