documents he signed with his ragged fist. All other letters were
rubber-stamped by Mr. Blake, who, also, in shorthand, in the course of
the hour, put down the indicated answers to many letters and received
the formula designations of reply to many other letters. Mr. Blake's
private opinion was that he worked longer hours than his employer,
although it was equally his private opinion that his employer was a
wonder for discovering work for others to perform.

At ten, to the stroke of the clock, as Pittman, Forrest's show-
manager, entered the office, Blake, burdened with trays of
correspondence, sheafs of documents, and phonograph cylinders, faded
away to his own office.

From ten to eleven a stream of managers and foremen flowed in and out.
All were well disciplined in terseness and time-saving. As Dick
Forrest had taught them, the minutes spent with him were not minutes
of cogitation. They must be prepared before they reported or
suggested. Bonbright, the assistant secretary, always arrived at ten
to replace Blake; and Bonbright, close to shoulder, with flying
pencil, took down the rapid-fire interchange of question and answer,
statement and proposal and plan. These shorthand notes, transcribed
and typed in duplicate, were the nightmare and, on occasion, the
Nemesis, of the managers and foremen. For, first, Forrest had a
remarkable memory; and, second, he was prone to prove its worth by
reference to those same notes of Bonbright.

A manager, at the end of a five or ten minute session, often emerged
sweating, limp and frazzled. Yet for a swift hour, at high tension,
Forrest met all comers, with a master's grip handling them and all the
multifarious details of their various departments. He told Thompson,