Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" by Various
page 57 of 178 (32%)
page 57 of 178 (32%)
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notions and prejudices that one listened to his comments on any
current movement or event, for he was sure to take an original and characteristic view which could not be calculated. From Mrs. Croly's Contribution to Her Husband's Memorial Mr. Croly was in his twenty-seventh year when I first knew him, but as yet had made no mark in journalism. He had not found his place in it. He was employed as City Editor of the New York _Herald_--a position which had not then developed the importance which attaches to it to-day--and his duties consisted mainly of making out the "slate" for the staff of reporters, and doing such reportorial work as it was the province and habit of the City Editor to perform. This afforded little scope for a man of Mr. Croly's latent power; and his dissatisfaction and desire to find a new field was the cause of our going West within three years after our marriage and starting a daily paper in a Western town. Had the town been larger the story would have been different. As it was, we spent our money, not without result; for Mr. Croly discovered that his forte was not execution, but direction, and that his fertility of brain only needed a sufficiently wide field to develop powers capable of greater expansion. He was the most utterly destitute of the mechanical or "doing" faculty of any man I ever saw, and never used his own hands if he could possibly help it. But ideas flowed freely upon all subjects in which he was interested, and he distributed them as freely, knowing that the |
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