A Fool and His Money | Page 2

Dead men part with it because they have to, fools because they want to.
In any event, Uncle Rilas did not leave me his money until my
freshman days were far behind me, wherein lies the solace that he may
have outgrown an opinion while I was going through the same process.
At twenty-three I confessed that all freshmen were insufferable, and
immediately afterward took my degree and went out into the world to
convince it that seniors are by no means adolescent. Having
successfully passed the age of reason, I too felt myself admirably
qualified to look with scorn upon all creatures employed in the business
of getting an education. There were times when I wondered how on

earth I could have stooped so low as to be a freshman. I still have the
disquieting fear that my uncle did not modify his opinion of me until I
was thoroughly over being a senior. You will note that I do not say he
changed his opinion. Modify is the word.
His original estimate of me, as a freshman, of course,--was uttered
when I, at the age of eighteen, picked out my walk in life, so to speak.
After considering everything, I decided to be a literary man. A novelist
or a playwright, I hadn't much of a choice between the two, or perhaps
a journalist. Being a journalist, of course, was preliminary; a sort of
makeshift. At any rate, I was going to be a writer. My Uncle Rilas, a
hard-headed customer who had read Scott as a boy and the Wall Street
news as a man,--without being misled by either,--was scornful. He said
that I would outgrow it, there was some consolation in that. He even
admitted that when he was seventeen he wanted to be an actor. There
you are, said he! I declared there was a great difference between being
an actor and being a writer. Only handsome men can be actors, while
I--well, by nature I was doomed to be nothing more engaging than a
novelist, who doesn't have to spoil an illusion by showing himself in
public.
Besides, I argued, novelists make a great deal of money, and
playwrights too, for that matter. He said in reply that an ordinarily
vigorous washerwoman could make more money than the average
novelist, and she always had a stocking without a hole to keep it in,
which was more to the point.
Now that I come to think of it, it was Uncle Rilas who oracularly
prejudged me, and not Uncle John, who was by way of being a sort of
literary chap himself and therefore lamentably unqualified to guide me
in any course whatsoever, especially as he had all he could do to keep
his own wolf at bay without encouraging mine, and who, besides
teaching good English, loved it wisely and too well. I think Uncle Rilas
would have held Uncle John up to me as an example,--a scarecrow, you
might say,--if it hadn't been for the fact that he loved him in spite of his
English. He must have loved me in spite of mine.
My mother felt in her heart that I ought to be a doctor or a preacher, but

she wasn't mean: she was positive I could succeed as a writer if I set
my mind to it. She was also sure that I could be President of the United
States or perhaps even a Bishop. We were Episcopalian.
When I was twenty-seven my first short story appeared in a magazine
of considerable weight, due to its advertising pages, but my Uncle Rilas
didn't read it until I had convinced him that the honorarium amounted
to three hundred dollars. Even then I was obliged to promise him a
glimpse of the check when I got it. Somewhat belated, it came in the
course of three or four months with a rather tart letter in which I was
given to understand that it wasn't quite the thing to pester a great
publishing house with queries of the kind I had been so persistent in
propounding. But at last Uncle Rilas saw the check and was properly
impressed. He took back what he said about the washerwoman, but
gave me a little further advice concerning the stocking.
In course of time my first novel appeared. It was a love story. Uncle
Rilas read the first five chapters and then skipped over to the last page.
Then he began it all over again and sat up nearly all night to finish it.
The next day he called it "trash" but invited me to have luncheon with
him at the Metropolitan Club, and rather noisily introduced me to a few
old cronies of his, who were not sufficiently interested in me to enquire
what my name was--a