“Bumps!” I laughed, “it’s uphill every bit of the road, and yet you’ve got to go full speed to get anywhere. But I’m running easily again, thank you.”
He waved away a cloud of pipe-smoke, and knowingly squinted through the haze. “We don’t speed up much here. And they ain’t no hill climbin’ t’ speak of. But say, if you ever should hit a nasty place on the route, toot your siren for me and I’ll come. I’m a regular little human garage when it comes to patchin’ up those aggravatin’ screws that need oilin’. And, say, don’t let Norberg bully you. My name’s Blackie. I’m goin’ t’ like you. Come on over t’ 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.
The boy took three unwilling steps toward the door. Then he turned a puzzled face toward the managing editor.