The bantering continued, and I learned that the youth cherished literary
aspirations, and that he performed certain work in connection with the
dramatic department for the managing editor, who kept theatrical news and
criticisms within his personal control.
Suddenly a chance remark broke the ice for a friendship between the young
man and me which was to last unbroken until his untimely death. Stephens
wrote the Isaac Pitman phonography! Here had I been for more than three
years wondering to find the shorthand writers of wide-awake and progressive
America floundering in what I conceived to be the Serbonian bog of an
archaic system of stenography. Unexpectedly a most superior young man came
within my ken who was a disciple of Isaac Pitman. Furthermore, like myself,
he was entirely self taught. No old shorthand writer who can look back a
quarter of a century on his own youthful enthusiasm for the art can fail to
appreciate what a bond of sympathy this discovery constituted. From that
night forward we were chosen friends, confiding our ambitions to each
other, discussing the grave issues of life and death, settling the problems
of literature.
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