"Is it serious? Will I die?" -- "In this world everything is serious -- and nothing." Schulze slowly surveyed all Hiram's outward signs of majesty that had been denied his own majestic intellect, noted the tremendous figure, the shoulders, the forehead, the massive brow and nose and chin -- an ensemble of unabused power, the handiwork of Nature at her best, a creation worth while, worth preserving intact and immortal. "Yes," he answered, with satiric bitterness; "you will have to die, and rot, just like the rest of us."

Author Biography

David Graham Phillips (1867 - 1911) was an American novelist and journalist of the muckraker tradition. After completing his education, Phillips worked as a newspaper reporter in Cincinnati, Ohio, before moving on to New York City where he was employed as a reporter for The Sun from 1890 to 1893, then columnist and editor with the New York World until 1902. In his spare time, he wrote a novel, The Great God Success, that was published in 1901. The royalty income enabled him to work as a freelance journalist while continuing to write fiction. Writing articles for various prominent magazines, he began to develop a reputation as a competent investigative journalist. Phillips' novels often commented on social issues of the day and frequently chronicled events based on his real-life journalistic experiences. He was considered a Progressive and for exposing corruption in the Senate he was labelled a muckraker.