aspirations, and that he performed certain work in connection with the
dramatic department for the managing editor, who kept theatrical news and
criticisms within his personal control.

Suddenly a chance remark broke the ice for a friendship between the young
man and me which was to last unbroken until his untimely death. Stephens
wrote the Isaac Pitman phonography! Here had I been for more than three
years wondering to find the shorthand writers of wide-awake and progressive
America floundering in what I conceived to be the Serbonian bog of an
archaic system of stenography. Unexpectedly a most superior young man came
within my ken who was a disciple of Isaac Pitman. Furthermore, like myself,
he was entirely self taught. No old shorthand writer who can look back a
quarter of a century on his own youthful enthusiasm for the art can fail to
appreciate what a bond of sympathy this discovery constituted. From that
night forward we were chosen friends, confiding our ambitions to each
other, discussing the grave issues of life and death, settling the problems
of literature. Notwithstanding his more youthful appearance, my seniority
in age was but slight. Gradually "Bob," as all his friends called him with
affectionate informality, was given opportunities to advance himself, under
the kindly yet firm guidance of the managing editor, Mr. Bradford Merrill.
That gentleman appreciated the distinct gifts of his young protege,
journalistic and literary, and he fostered them wisely and well. I remember
perfectly the first criticism of an important play which "Bob" was
permitted to write unaided. It was Richard Mansfield's initial appearance
in Philadelphia as "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde," at the Chestnut Street Theatre
on Monday, October 3, 1887.

After the paper had gone to press, and while Mr. Merrill and a few of the
telegraph editors were partaking of a light lunch, the night editor, the
late R.E.A. Dorr, asked Mr. Merrill "how Stephens had made out."