wn him
to have twelve and fifteen columns of this matter in a single issue of
the paper. He was delighted to work, and I was pleased to have his work,
for his style was beautiful and the tone he imparted to the newspaper
was considerable. Hour after hour he would sit at his table, his
prominent eyes resting as close to the paper as his nose would permit,
scratching away with beaver-like diligence and giving me no more
annoyance than a bronze ornament. His eyes troubled him greatly in those
days, one was bulbous, and protruded farther than the other. He was as
sensitive as a flower. An unkind word from anybody was as serious to him
as a cut from a whiplash, but I do not believe he was in any sense
resentful.... He was poetic, and his whole nature seemed attuned to the
beautiful, and he wrote beautifully of things which were neither
wholesome nor inspiring. He came to be in time a member of the city
staff at a fair compensation, and it was then that his descriptive
powers developed. He loved to write of things in humble life. He prowled
about the dark corners of the city, and from gruesome places he dug out
charming idyllic stories. The negro stevedores on the steamboat-landings
fascinated him. He wrote of their songs, their imitations, their uncouth
ways, and he found picturesqueness in their rags, poetry in their juba
dances."

A journalistic feat still remembered in Cincinnati for its daring was
Hearn's ascent of the spire of the cathedral on the back of a famous
steeplejack, for the purpose of writing an account of the view of the
city from that exalted position.

Mr. Edmund Henderson gives an account of the accomplishment of the
performance. Hearn was told of the peril of the thing but he would not
listen. Despite his physique he was as courageous as a lion, and there
was no assignment of peril that he would not bid for avidly. "Before the
climb began the editor handed him a field glass with the suggestion that
he might find it useful. Hearn, however, quietly handed it back with the
remark 'perhaps I had better not take it; something might happen.'
Amidst the cheers of the crowd beneath the foolhardy pair accomplished
their climb. Hearn came back to the office and wrote two columns
describing his sensations, and the wonders of the view he had obtained
from the steeple top, though he was so near-sighted he could not have
seen five feet beyond the tip of his nose."

Henceforth Hearn accepted the "night stations" on