She did not stop to analyse her feeling of relief at this release, and went on to protest: “But I want your life to be my life. I want there to be only one life—our life.”
“And there shall be—each contributing his share, at least I’ll try to contribute mine. But you have your own individuality, dear; and a very strong one it is. And I don’t want you to change.”
At the time he was deep in his plans for illustrating the News-Record. Early in that fall’s campaign they had secured the best cartoonist in America. Cartoons are rarely the work of one man but are got up by consultations. Howard spent never less than an hour each day with the cartoonist, Wickham, wrestling with the problem of the next day’s picture. For he insisted upon having a striking cartoon each day, and gave it the most conspicuous place in the paper—the top-centre of the first page.
“If a cartoon is worth printing at all,” he said, “it is worth printing large and conspicuous. And to be worth printing it must be like an ideal editorial—one point sharply and swiftly made and so clear that the most careless glance-of-the-eye is enough.”
Wickham had made a series of cartoons on the campaign, humorous and satirical, which had the distinction of being reproduced on lantern slides for use in all parts of the town. It was an admirable beginning of the new policy of illustration. Howard had been making a careful study of all the illustrators in the country, not overlooking those toiling in obscurity on the big western dailies. He had selected a staff of twenty; as soon as Coulter and Stokely assented, he engaged them by telegraph. Five were developed artists, the rest beginners with talent. He gave all of his attention for two weeks to organising this staff. He infected it with his enthusiasm. He impressed upon it his ideas of newspaper illustration—the dash and energy of the French illustrators adapted to American public taste. He insisted upon the artists studying the French illustrated papers and applying what they learned. It was not until the first Sunday in December that he felt ready to submit the results of these labours to the public.
Again he scored over the “contemporaries” of the News-Record. They printed many more illustrations than it did. It had only one illustration on a page, but there was one on every page and a good one. All the subjects were well chosen—either action or character—and as many good looking women as possible.
“Never publish a commonplace face,” he said. “There is no such thing in life as an uninteresting face. Always find the element of interest and bring it out.”
The result of this policy, interpreted by a carefully trained and enthusiastic staff, was what the out-of-town press was soon praising as “a revelation in newspaper-illustration.” Howard himself was surprised. He had mentally insured against a long period of disappointment.
“This shows,” he remarked to King and Vroom, “how much more competent men are than we usually think—if they get a chance, if they are pointed in the right direction and are left free.”
“He certainly knows his business.” Vroom was looking after Howard admiringly. “I never saw anybody who so well understood when to lead and when to let alone. What results he does get!”