"
"But your stories--" exclaimed Anthony aloud, almost involuntarily.
"Oh, that's different," Dick asserted astoundingly. "I have a
reputation, you see, so I'm expected to deal with strong themes."
Anthony gave an interior start, realizing with this remark how much
Richard Caramel had fallen off. Did he actually think that these amazing
latter productions were as good as his first novel?
Anthony went back to the apartment and set to work. He found that the
business of optimism was no mean task. After half a dozen futile starts
he went to the public library and for a week investigated the files of a
popular magazine. Then, better equipped, he accomplished his first
story, "The Dictaphone of Fate." It was founded upon one of his few
remaining impressions of that six weeks in Wall Street the year before.
It purported to be the sunny tale of an office boy who, quite by
accident, hummed a wonderful melody into the dictaphone. The cylinder
was discovered by the boss's brother, a well-known producer of musical
comedy--and then immediately lost. The body of the story was concerned
with the pursuit of the missing cylinder and the eventual marriage of
the noble office boy (now a successful composer) to Miss Rooney, the
virtuous stenographer, who was half Joan of Arc and half Florence
Nightingale.
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