my sanctum once in a while and I'll show you
my scrapbook and let you play with the office revolver."

And so it happened that I had not been in Milwaukee a month before
Blackie and I were friends.

Norah was horrified. My letters were full of him. I told her that she
might get a more complete mental picture of him if she knew that he
wore the pinkest shirts, and the purplest neckties, and the blackest and
whitest of black-and-white checked vests that ever aroused the envy
of an office boy, and beneath them all, the gentlest of hearts. And
therefore one loves him. There is a sort of spell about the illiterate
little slangy, brown Welshman. He is the presiding genius of the place.
The office boys adore him. The Old Man takes his advice in selecting
a new motor car; the managing editor arranges his lunch hour to suit
Blackie's and they go off to the Press club together, arm in arm. It is
Blackie who lends a sympathetic ear to the society editor's tale of
woe. He hires and fires the office boys; boldly he criticizes the
news editor's makeup; he receives delegations of tan-coated, red-faced
prizefighting-looking persons; he gently explains to the photographer
why that last batch of cuts make their subjects look as if afflicted
with the German measles; he arbitrates any row that the newspaper may
have with such dignitaries as the mayor or the chief of police; he
manages boxing shows; he skims about in a smart little roadster; he
edits the best sporting page in the city; and at four o'clock of an
afternoon he likes to send around the corner for a chunk of devil's food
cake with butter filling from the Woman's Exchange. Blackie never went
to school to speak of. He doesn't know was from were. But he can "see"
a story quicker, and farther and clearer than any newspaper man I ever
knew--excepting Peter Orme.

There is a legend about to the effect that one day the managing editor,
who is Scotch and without a sense of humor, ordered that Blackie should
henceforth be addressed by his surname of Griffith, as being a more
dignified appellation for the use of fellow reporters, hangers-on, copy
kids, office boys and others about the big building.

The day after the order was issued the managing editor summoned a
freckled youth and thrust a sheaf of galley proofs into his hand.

"Take those to Mr. Griffith," he ordered without looking up.

"T' who?"

"To Mr. Griffith," said the managing editor, laboriously, and scowling a
bit.