... David G. Croly's personality was always healthy and hopeful. He
commended with justice, he censured with consideration, he changed or
cut out your copy with regard exclusively to the increased value of
the article for newspaper purposes. The staff was like a large family
under him. Every one's equal rights were regarded, every one's special
talents were stimulated, every one's peculiar fads or foibles were
genially borne with. Officially he had no favorites. Personally he
chose his friends among the staff as freely as he would do among
outsiders. The unrecorded kindnesses of the man were fragrant and not
few. To newcomers he would intimate what were the prejudices or
susceptibilities or limitations of those among whom they were cast. He
would be just as careful to see that the old standbys did not make
things rough or unfair for the newcomers. He had little respect for
the gifts or views that could not be made interconvertible with
newspaper results. He took a public view of party questions and rarely
a personal view of any questions. Between what he thought and wished
as an iconoclast, a reformer, or a reconstructor of foundations and
what he was intrusted to say as an editor, he drew the line sharp and
clear. While, as I have remarked, he was rarely a writer with his own
hand, the articles which he suggested or poured into or pulled out of
others were made so eminently characteristic of himself that they were
stamped with his quality as truly as if he had written them himself.
He was very proud of the success of the men in after life who started
on their newspaper careers under him. He followed them with good
wishes always, he spoke strong words for them when, where, and to whom
they little suspected, and he rightly regarded their success as a
vindication of his own prescience in having set them on their way, and
also as a gratification not merely to his confidence in his own
opinion concerning them, but to the wishes of his unselfish heart in
desiring that they should take the pinnacles of achievement in
whatsoever field of newspaper work inclination, necessity, opportunity
or destiny marked out before them.
ST. CLAIR MCKELWAY.
The _Eagle_ Office, Brooklyn, May 14, 1889.