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