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246 My next commission I owed to the Evening Telegraph, for which I made a remarkable journey to Atlantic City: a voyage of discovery, though the report of it did not paralyse the Philadelphia public. I was deeply impressed by my exercise of my faculty of observation thus tested on familiar ground, but I am afraid it left the Editor indifferent, and, as in his case the Eastern Shore was not a friendly link between us, he expressed no desire for a second article or for a second visit. I have regretted it since, the Editor being Clarke Davis, whom not to know was, I believe, not to have arrived so far in Philadelphia journalism as I liked to think I had.

A more remarkable journey followed to New York for I wish I could remember what paper; or perhaps it is just as well I cannot, the adventure adding to the reputation neither of the paper nor of myself. The object was to attend the press view of an important exhibition of paintings, and at that stage of my education I doubt if I could have told a Rembrandt from a Rubens, much less a Kenyon Cox from a Church, a Chase from a Blum, which was more immediately to the point. I had my punishment on the spot, for my hours in the Gallery may be counted the most humiliating of my life. My ignorance would not let me lose sight of it for one little second. J. had gone with me—how I came to know him I mean to tell further on—but he had no press ticket, a stern man at the door refused to admit him without one, and I was alone in my