NEVER A SECRETARY 



sailed on the 15th January from Liverpool by the 

 Campania. 



Crowds of reporters met me when we arrived off 

 the Quarantine Station at New York. I tried to avoid 

 them, but there were the usual interviews, and I remem- 

 ber that the reporters I didn't say a word to, or even 

 see, wrote the longest stories. A good deal had of 

 course appeared in print in New York during the 

 month of my success in England. 



Mr Charles Fleischman had bought a hundred copies 

 of the Inter-Ocean of Chicago whenever anything had 

 appeared about me, and he had mailed these to all his 

 friends to show " how well his boy had been doing." 

 When I got to New York itself the reporters didn't 

 leave me alone : some of them from whom I scurried 

 burnt me up with mock interviews full of jokes at my 

 expense. They described my palatial apartment and 

 made out that my room was littered with cigar ends 

 and cigarette stubs and that the carpets and furniture 

 were all burnt and spoiled — the room of me, Tod Sloan, 

 who cannot help being neat and who loves tidy rooms ! 



They also talked about my coloured servant — a 

 black nigger named Dick Keys. He was my valet 

 in town, while I had a white man, Frank Garrett, for 

 my race- course valet. The two used to quarrel like 

 blazes. Sometimes I thought I would have a secretary 

 to manage them, but I never reached that pinnacle 

 of success. At the last moment I would think that 

 I couldn't afford the luxury. Thinking it over now 

 I fancy that, with the way I was spending money 

 then and afterwards, a secretary would have been 

 jolly useful, for I was very careless about banking 

 and other business. Here is an instance : I went in 

 to my bank one day — it was years later than the time 

 I have just been writing about — in fear and trembling 



77 



