The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

Ray's voice broke a little as he said this; but he hoped Mr. Brandreth / did not notice, and he made haste to get out into the crowded street, / and be alone with his emotions. He was quite giddy with the turn that / Fortune's wheel had taken, and he walked a long way up town before he / recovered his balance. He had never dreamt of such prompt consideration / as Mr. Brandreth had promised to give his novel. He had expected to / carry it round from publisher to publisher, and to wait weeks, and / perhaps whole months, for their decision. Most of them he imagined / refusing to look at it at all; and he had prepared himself for rebuffs. / He could not help thinking that Mr. Brandreth's different behavior was / an effect of his goodness of heart, and of his present happiness. Of / course he was a little ridiculous about that baby of his; Ray supposed / that was natural, but he decided that if he should ever be a father he / would not gush about it to the first person he met. He did not like Mr. / Brandreth's interrupting him with the account of those amateur / theatricals when he was outlining the plot of his story; but that was / excusable, and it showed that he was really interested. If it had not / been for the accidental fact that Mr. Brandreth had taken the part of / Romeo in those theatricals, he might not have caught on to the notion of / _A Modern Romeo_ at all. The question whether he was not rather silly / himself to enter so fully into his plot, helped him to condone Mr. / Brandreth's weakness, which was not incompatible with shrewd business / sense. All that Mr. Brandreth had said of the state of the trade and its / new conditions was sound; he was probably no fool where his interest was / concerned.

Ray resented for him the cruelty of Mr. Kane in turning the / baby's precocity into the sort of joke he had made of it; but he admired / his manner of saying things, too. He would work up very well in a story; / but he ought to be made pathetic as well as ironical; he must be made to / have had an early unhappy love-affair; the girl either to have died, or / to have heartlessly jilted him. He could be the hero's friend at some / important moment; Ray did not determine just at what moment; but the / hero should be about to wreck his happiness, somehow, and Mr. Kane / should save him from the rash act, and then should tell him the story of / his own life. Ray recurred to the manuscript he had left with Mr. / Brandreth, and wondered if Mr. Brandreth would read it himself, and if / he did, whether he would see any resemblance between the hero and the / author. He had sometimes been a little ashamed of that mesmerization / business in the story, but if it struck a mood of the reading public, it / would be a great piece of luck; and he prepared himself to respect it. / If Chapley & Co. accepted the book, he was going to write all that / passage over, and strengthen it.

He was very happy; and he said to himself that he must try to be very / good and to merit the fortune that had befallen him. He must not let it / turn his head, or seem more than it really was; after all it was merely / a chance to be heard that he was given. He instinctively strove to / arrest the wheel which was bringing him up, and must carry him down if / it kept on moving. With an impulse of the old heathen superstition / lingering in us all, he promised his god, whom he imagined to be God, / that he would be very grateful and humble if He would work a little / miracle for him, and let the wheel carry him up without carrying him / over and down. In the unconscious selfishness which he had always / supposed morality, he believed that the thing most pleasing to his god / would be some immediate effort in his own behalf, of prudent industry or / frugality; and he made haste to escape from the bliss of his high hopes / as if it were something that was wrong in itself, and that he would / perhaps be punished for.

He went to the restaurant where he had breakfasted, and bargained for / board and lodging by the week. It was not so cheap as he had expected to / get it; with an apparent flexibility, the landlord was rigorous on the / point of a dollar a day for the room; and Ray found that he must pay / twelve dollars a week for his board and lodging instead of the ten he / had set as a limit. But he said to himself that he must take the risk, / and must make up the two dollars, somehow. His room was at the top of / the house, and it had a view of the fourth story of a ten-story / apartment-house opposite; but it had a southerly exposure, and there / was one golden hour of the day when the sun shone into it, over the / shoulder of a lower edifice next to the apartment-house, and round the / side of a clock tower beyond the avenue. He could see a bit of the / châlet-roof of an elevated railroad station; he could see the tops of / people's heads in the street below if he leaned out of his window far / enough, and he had the same bird's-eye view of the passing carts and / carriages. He shared it with the sparrows that bickered in the / window-casing, and with the cats that crouched behind the chimneys and / watched the progress of the sparrows' dissensions with furtive and / ironical eyes.

Within, the slope of the roof gave a picturesque slant to the ceiling. / The room was furnished with an American painted set; there was a clock / on the little shelf against the wall that looked as if it were French; / but it was not going, and there was no telling what accent it might tick / with if it were wound up. There was a little mahogany table in one / corner near the window to write on, and he put his books up on the shelf / on each side of the clock.