In offering this book to you I might have advantage of the occasion
to express my friendship and declare how high I hold you as a
journalist and a man. Or I might speak of those years at Washington
when in the gallery we worked shoulder to shoulder; I might recall to
you the wit of Hannum, or remind you of the darkling Barrett, the
mighty Decker, the excellent Cohen, the vivid Brown, the imaginative
Miller, the volatile Angus, the epigrammatic Merrick, the quietly
satirical Splain, Rouzer the earnest, Boynton the energetic, Carson
the eminent, and Dunnell, famous for a bitter, frank integrity. I
might remember that day when the gifted Fanciulli, with no more
delicate inspiration than crackers, onions, and cheese, and no more
splendid conservatory than Shoemaker's, wrote, played and consecrated
to you his famous "Lone Star March" wherewith he so disquieted the
public present of the next concert in the White House grounds. Or I
might hark back to the campaign of '92, when together we struggled
against national politics as evinced in the city of New York; I might
repaint that election night when, with one hundred thousand whirling
dervishes of democracy in Madison Square, dancing dances, and singing
songs of victory, we undertook through the hubbub to send from the
"Twenty-third street telegraph office" half-hourly bulletins to our
papers in the West; how you, accompanied of the dignified Richard
Bright, went often to the Fifth Avenue Hotel; and how at last you
dictated your bulletins--a sort of triumphant blank verse, they
were--as Homeric of spirit as lofty of phrase--to me, who caught them
as they came from your lips, losing none of their fire, and so
flashed them all burning into Texas, far away. But of what avail
would be such recount? Distance separates us and time has come
between. Those are the old years, these are the new, with newer
years beyond. Life like a sea is filling from rivers of experience.