Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/209



HERE was a letter in the mail yesterday from a firm in Chicago asking me to recommend McGuire. The requirements were that he should be a man of honesty and integrity with energy and initiative. It was a hard rôle for Mac to play, and I laid the letter aside to ponder over my answer and its phrasing. I wanted to be both truthful and kind.

Mac was the sort of man who doesn't care what people think. He expected to get by through his own cleverness and adroitness rather than by honest effort. He never worked unless he had to do so, and then as little as possible. If I had ever wanted him suddenly, I should have sought him in the most frequented loafing place about the campus. He was "no student", he admitted, but he was sure he was "getting as much out