Within fifty days after he became editor, the legislature met, and it devolved on him to gather in the substance of their speeches and addresses, and record the principal part of their doings. This brought him into immediate and extensive acquaintance with members of the senate, whose hall he chose to visit chiefly. They soon became acquainted with him, and saw and felt his power.
His life was stirring and active, and upon a scale quite in contrast with the life of a recluse teaching in the Blind Institute in Philadelphia, and quietly reading law only a year before.
Though a man of strong impulse at times, it is intelligent, purposeful, and under such control that upon such occasions he has won his highest praise for brilliancy. He has made mistakes and blunders, and has had his share of regrets and misgivings, giving ample proof that he is a member of the human family.
Mr. Blaine’s old foreman, who was afterwards proprietor of the paper, Howard Owen, says that he wrote most of his editorials at home, and came down to the office to see his numerous friends, and that they would have great times pounding for “copy” while he was entertaining hosts of friends in the office below. One who knows him well has written of him as a conversationalist.
Mr. Blame has few equals. He has a keen appreciation of fun, and can tell a story with a wonderful simplicity. There is no dragging prelude, no verbose details preceding a stupid finale; the story is presented always dramatically, and fired almost as from a gun, when the point is reached.
The dinner-table in the Blaine house is the place where the gayest of good-natured pleasantry rules. From six to eight the dinner speeds under cover of running talk upon the incidents of the day.
Mr. Owen says that “when they came to ‘making up the form’ Mr. Blaine would stand over him and attend to every detail, decide the location of every article, and give just that prominence that would produce the best effect.” It showed the interest he took in the children of his own brain, and the great activity of the man.
His force of intellect, strength of constitution, and great endurance have been a marvel to many.
He has lived his life on a rising tide, amid immense prosperity, and the great cheerfulness of temper thus produced has made life less a drag and more a joy to him.
He struck the current at the start, caught at its flood that “tide in the affairs of men that leads on to fortune.”