The Story of an Untold Love by Paul Leicester Ford

Author:Paul Leicester Ford [Ford, Paul Leicester]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-06-16T14:26:34+00:00

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XVI

March 7. It is little to be proud of, yet I like to think that though I have behaved dishonestly, I have not entirely lost my sense of right and wrong. Twice at least have I faced temptation and been strong enough to resist.

When I carried to Mr. Blodgett the money I received for my book, I was so profoundly discouraged that my mood was only too apparent. In his kindness he suggested that I buy certain bonds of a railroad his firm was then reorganizing,—telling me from his inside knowledge that a year's holding would give me a profit of thirty per cent. It was so sore a temptation to make money without exertion and practically without risk that I assented, and authorized him to buy the securities; but a night's reflection made the dishonesty of my act clear to me, and the next morning I went to his office and told him I wished to countermand my order.

"What's that for?" he inquired.

"I have thought better of the matter, and do not think I have the right."

"Why not?"

"If this money were a trust in my hands, it would not be honest to use it in speculation, would it?"

"No."

"That is practically what it is, since it was stolen from a trust, and is to be returned to it."

He smiled rather grimly. "It's lucky for Wall Street," he said, "that you literary fellows don't have the making and enforcing of laws; and it's luckier still that you don't have to earn your living down here, for the money you'd make wouldn't pay your burial insurance." Yet though he laughed cynically, he shook my hand, I thought, more warmly than usual when we parted, as if he felt at heart that I had done right.

Much easier to resist was an offer of another kind. Very foolishly, I told Mr. Whitely that I had received a letter from the literary editor of the leading American review asking if I would write the criticism of the History of the Turks.

"That is a singular piece of good fortune," Mr. Whitely said cheerfully, "and guarantees me a complimentary notice in a periodical that rarely praises."

"That is by no means certain," I answered. "You know as well as I that it does not gloze a poor book, nor pass over defects in silence."

"But you can hardly write critically of your own book!" cried Mr. Whitely, for once giving me a share in our literary partnership. "For if there are defects you ought to have corrected them in proof."

"Of course I do not intend to write the review!" I exclaimed.

"Not write it? Why not?" he questioned in amazement equal to mine.

"Because I am absolutely unfitted to do it."

"Why, you know all about the subject!"

"I mean that no author can for a moment write discriminatingly of his own work; and besides, the offer would never have been made if my connection with the book were known."

"But they will never know."

"I should."

"You mean to say you do not intend to do it?"

"I shall write to-night declining.

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