When, for instance, he happened to need some information about India or
the West Indies, he always directed one of the other men to find it for
him. This arrangement had, from his standpoint, the double advantage of
making the other man learn something of which he was ignorant, and of
leaving me free to work at something of which I was ignorant. Thus J. P.
killed two intellectual birds with one stone.
It was not only in regard to mental accomplishments, however, that J. P.
pursued his plan of educating everybody around him. He insisted, among
other things, that I should learn to ride, not because there was any
lack of people who could ride with him, but because by means of
application I could add a new item to the list of things I could do.
After a dozen lessons from a groom I progressed so far that, having
acquired the ability to stay more or less in the saddle while the horse
trotted, Mr. Pulitzer frequently took me riding with him.
We always rode three abreast--a groom on J. P.'s right and myself on his
left; and conversation had to be kept up the whole time. This presented
no peculiar difficulties when the horses were walking, but when they
trotted I found it no easy task to keep my seat, to preserve the precise
distance from J.
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