Starting at any point in your career Mr. Pulitzer worked backward and
forward until all that you had ever thought or done, from your earliest
recollection down to the present moment, had been disclosed to him so
far as he was interested to know it, and your memory served you.
This process varied in length according to the nature of the experiences
of the person subjected to it, and to the precise quality of Mr.
Pulitzer's interest in him. In my own case it lasted about three months
and was copiously interspersed with written statements by myself of
facts about myself, opinions by myself about myself, and endless
references to people I had known during the past twenty-five years.
Mr. Pulitzer's attitude toward references was the product of vast
experience. He complained that scores of men had come to him with
references from some of the most distinguished people living, references
so glowing that one man should have been ashamed to write them and the
other ashamed to receive them, references of such a character that their
happy possessors might, without being guilty of immodesty, have applied
for the Chief Justiceship of the United States, the Viceroyalty of
India, the Archbishopric of Canterbury, the Presidency of the Royal
College of Surgeons, or the Mastership of Baliol, but that the great
majority of these men had turned out to be ignorant, lazy and stupid to
an unbelievable degree.
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