Mrs. Radigan E-Book

Nelson Lloyd

• Herausgeber: Qasim Idrees
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Mrs. Radigan : her biography, with that of Miss Pearl Veal, and the memoirs of J. Madison Mudison / by Nelson Lloyd

Leseprobe

Mrs. Radigan

Nelson Lloyd

.

MRS. RADIGAN

CHAPTER I

The First Chapter and the Last

When I was in college, in that brief interval between the foot-ball and the rowing season in which my mind was turned to books, I had dreams, very faint and illusive, but still dreams, that some day, when the four-year eligibility rule barred me from further struggles on the gridiron and the river, I should fall to work and win fame. Even at that time I was famous. My picture was almost a daily feature of the metropolitan journals, and my weight, height, and chest-measure were solemnly recorded at regular intervals for the information and instruction of the hundreds of thousands of students of that greatest of modern educators—the newspaper.[Pg 2] It cannot be frankly said that I looked for anything finer than this, but I did want something more lasting. Young as I was, I realized that the great half-back of to-day is the coach of to-morrow, and the day after the clerk in a country store, or the garrulous bore who sits about the club and talks of games long since forgotten. So I cast about for fields where new laurels could be gathered. But how quickly laurels wither! How fine they are to the eye, yet as food how unsatisfying! So I opened a real-estate office.

I went into business after much deliberation. Had I been born rich, secure in the possession of a home with a full larder, a full wardrobe, and a full stable, I should have preferred to take up brain-work and to occupy myself in one of the learned professions, but I simply could not afford it, and lacked that spirit of self-sacrifice and family sacrifice which causes men to give up all for art and science, and to go down to their graves full of honors and degrees, but empty of all else. To use a metaphor, mixed, like[Pg 3] all expressive metaphors, the pen called to me, but when I thought of Homer, of Cervantes, of Goldsmith, of Johnson, of Poe, of scores of others, gentlemen all and men of art and learning, but frayed and shabby, the roll-top desk and the revolving chair seemed safer though less glorious. Fame is won easily with the pen, but to win money you must give more than words, however fraught with wisdom and beauty—you must give yards of cotton, boxes of buttons, and tons of pig-iron and pork. Occasionally a learned scientist discovers something that brings him riches, but, if he is a true scientist, that wealth is quickly dissipated in journeys to that murky, unreal bourne where the world's genius wanders, groping, while the rest of mankind is eating grass with the animals. I wanted to wander, but was afraid. The thought of short rations held me back. Two roads were open, and I chose the easier, but the longing for the other way has never left me. Still, there is consolation, as there is consolation for everyone in this world, even to the Chris[Pg 4]tian Scientist with gout. In life it is a comfort to know that when you are gone your name is still to live, that your bust will adorn some hall of fame, and that women's clubs will haggle over the meaning of what you have written. But to live in starvation and in ignorance of your own importance, to have the laurels placed upon a marble brow—that is different. To be in bronze in a public square is well enough, but it is better by far to have yourself in the flesh in one of the broad windows of the Ticktock Club. Fifty years of terrapin and champagne are better than two thousand of honored memory. Real estate offered me the fifty years. I chose it, and the wisdom of that choice becomes more apparent daily. I know now that it profits one more to have his name signed to a thirty-foot front on Fifth Avenue than to an idyllic poem or a masterpiece of prose.