No, they wouldn't have me.

I never got a job in my life that I asked for! But all my life better jobs have been given me than I dared ask for.

Well--I was at the end of my rope in Atlanta and I was trying to make a living in any honest way I could when one day a telegram came from the New York _World_ (it was the old _World_, which was one of the best of the dailies in its literary quality) asking me to come to New York.

I had never seen a man on the paper--had never been in New York except for a day when I landed there on a return voyage from a European trip that I took during one vacation when I was in the University.

Then I went to New York straight and quickly.