He rode there with a free lance--known
by all the editors--capable in his way--a man to be relied upon for
anything but imagination. From one office to another, he trudged;
climbing numberless stairs, filling in numberless slips of paper
with his name, saying nothing about his business. They knew his
business--the ability to do anything that was going. He had written
leaders on the advance of Socialism--criticized a play, reviewed a
book. It says little beyond the fact that one is ready and willing
to do these things.
So, until the nearing hour of lunch time, he went about--a scavenger
of jobs--sweeping up the refuse of the paper's needs, as the boys
in Covent Garden search through the barrows of sawdust for the stray,
green grapes that have been thrown out with the brushings of the
stalls.
If one knew how half the men in London find the way to live, one would
stand amazed. Life is not the dreadful thing; it is the living of
it. Life in the abstract is a gay pageant, the passing of a show,
caparisoned in armour, in ermine, in motley, in what you will. But
see that man without his armour, this woman without her ermine, these
in the crowd without their motley and the merry, merry jangling of
the bells, and you will find how slender are the muscles that the
armour lays bare, how shrivelled the breast that the ermine strips,
how dragged and weary is that pitiable, naked figure which a few
moments before was dancing fantastically, grimacing with its ape.
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