Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.
AN ADVENTURE WITH A GENIUS
Recollections of JOSEPH PULITZER.
In the course of my wanderings about the labyrinth of life it has beenmy good fortune to find awaiting me around every corner some newadventure. If these have generally lacked that vividness of action whichto the eye of youth is the very test of adventure, they have been richin a kind of experience which to a mature and reflective mind has avalue not to be measured in terms of dramatic incident.
My adventures, in a word, have been chiefly those of personal contactwith the sort of men whose lives are the material around which historybuilds its story, and from which fiction derives all that lends to itthe air of reality.
I have had friends and acquaintances in a score of countries, and inevery station of society—kings and beggars, viceroys and ward-politicians, judges and criminals, men of brain and men of brawn.
My first outstanding adventure was with a stern and formidable man, thecaptain of a sailing vessel, of whose ship's company I was one in avoyage across the Pacific; one of my most recent was with a man not lessstern or formidable, with the man who is the central figure in thepresent narrative.
The tale has been told before in a volume entitled "Joseph Pulitzer:Reminiscences of a Secretary." The volume has been out of print for sometime, but the continued demand for it has called for its re-issue. Thechange in title has been made in response to many suggestions that thecharacter of the material is more aptly described as "An Adventure witha Genius."
ALLEYNE IRELAND.
New York, 1920.
I. In a Casting Net
II. Meeting Joseph Pulitzer
III. Life at Cap Martin
IV. Yachting in the Mediterranean
V. Getting to Know Mr. Pulitzer
VI. Weisbaden and an Atlantic Voyage
VII. Bar Harbor and the Last Cruise
A long illness, a longer convalescence, a positive injunction from mydoctor to leave friends and business associates and to seek some spotwhere a comfortable bed and good food could be had in convenientproximity to varied but mild forms of amusement—and I found myself inthe autumn of the year 1910 free and alone in the delightful city ofHamburg.
All my plans had gone down wind, and as I sat at my table in the Cafe
Ziechen, whence, against the background of the glittering blue of the
Alster, I could see the busy life of the Alter Jungfernstieg and the
Alsterdamm, my thoughts turned naturally to the future.
It is not the easiest thing in the world to reconstruct at forty yearsof age the whole scheme of your life; but my illness, and otherhappenings of a highly disagreeable character, had compelled me toabandon a career to which I had devoted twenty years of arduous labor;and the question which pressed for an immediate answer was: What are yougoing to do now?
Various alternatives presented themselves. There had been a suggestionthat I should take the editorship of a newspaper in Calcutta; animportant f