I awaited only his signal to begin reading, confident that I could
win laurels for myself without robbing Pollard, whose wreath was firmly
fixed on his brow.
Alas for my hopes! My very first sentence destroyed my chances, for I
had the misfortune to begin reading something which he had already
heard. Nothing annoyed him more than this; and we all made a habit of
writing "Dead" across any article in a periodical as soon as J. P. had
had it, so that we could keep off each other's trails. I am willing to
believe that this was the first and only time that Pollard ever forgot
to kill an article after he had read it, but it was enough, in the
deplorable state of Mr. Pulitzer's nerves that morning, to inflict a
wound upon my reputation as a breakfast-time reader which months did not
suffice to heal.
With such a bad start Mr. Pulitzer immediately concluded that I was
useless, and he worked himself up into such a state about it that
passage after passage, carefully marked by Pollard, was greeted with,
"Stop! Stop! For God's sake!" or,
"Next! Next!" or,
"My God! Is there much more of that?" or,
"Well, Mr. Ireland, isn't there ANYTHING interesting in all those
papers?"
I bore up manfully against this until he made the one remark I could not
stand.
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