BLACKIE’S PHILOSOPHY
I did not write Norah about Von Gerhard. After all, I told myself,
there was nothing to write. And so I was the first to break the solemn
pact that we had made.
“You will write everything, won’t you, Dawn dear?” Norah had pleaded,
with tears in her pretty eyes. “Promise me. We’ve been nearer to each
other in these last few months than we have been since we were girls.
And I’ve loved it so. Please don’t do as you did during those miserable
years in New York, when you were fighting your troubles alone and we
knew nothing of it. You wrote only the happy things. Promise me you’ll
write the unhappy ones too—though the saints forbid that there should
be any to write! And Dawn, don’t you dare to forget your heavy
underwear in November. Those lake breezes!—Well, some one has to tell
you, and I can’t leave those to Von Gerhard. He has promised to act as
monitor over your health.”
And so I promised. I crammed my letters with descriptions of the Knapf
household. I assured her that I was putting on so much weight that the
skirts which formerly hung about me in limp, dejected folds now refused
to meet in the back, and all the hooks and eyes were making faces at
each other. My cheeks, I told her, looked as if I were wearing
plumpers, and I was beginning to waddle and puff as I walked.
Norah made frantic answer:
“For mercy’s sake child, be careful or you’ll be FAT!”
To which I replied: “Don’t care if I am. Rather be hunky and healthy
than skinny and sick. Have tried both.”
It is impossible to avoid becoming round-cheeked when one is working on
a paper that allows one to shut one’s desk and amble comfortably home
for dinner at least five days in the week. Everybody is at least plump
in this comfortable, gemutlich town, where everybody placidly locks his
shop or office and goes home at noon to dine heavily on soup and meat
and vegetables and pudding, washed down by the inevitable beer and
followed by forty winks on the dining room sofa with the German Zeitung
spread comfortably over the head as protection against the flies.
There is a fascination about the bright little city. There is about it
something quaint and foreign, as though a cross-section of the old
world had been dumped bodily into the lap of Wisconsin. It does not
seem at all strange to hear German spoken everywhere—in the streets, in
the shops, in the theaters, in the street cars. One day I chanced upon
a sign hung above the doorway of a little German bakery over on the
north side. There were Hornchen and Kaffeekuchen in the windows, and a
brood of flaxen-haired and sticky children in the back of the shop. I
stopped, open-mouthed, to stare at the worn sign tacked over the door.
“Hier wird Englisch gesprochen,” it announced.
I blinked. Then I read it again. I shut my eyes, and opened them again
suddenly. The fat German letters spoke their message as before—“English
spoken here.”
On reaching the office I told Norberg, the city editor, about my find.
He was not impressed. Norberg never is impressed. He is the most
soul-satisfying and theatrical city editor that I have ever met. He is
fat, and unbelievably nimble, and keen-eyed, and untiring. He says,
“Hell!” when things go wrong; he smokes innumerable cigarettes,
inhaling the fumes and sending out the thin wraith of smoke with little
explosive sounds between tongue and lips; he wears blue shirts, and no
collar to speak of, and his trousers are kept in place only by a
miracle and an inefficient looking leather belt.
When he refused to see the story in the little German bakery sign I
began to argue.
“But man alive, this is America! I think I know a story when I see it.
Suppose you were traveling in Germany, and should come across a sign
over a shop, saying: ‘Hier wird Deutsch gesprochen.’ Wouldn’t you think
you were dreaming?”
Norberg waved an explanatory hand. “This isn’t America. This is
Milwaukee. After you’ve lived here a year or so you’ll understand what
I mean. If we should run a story of that sign, with a two-column cut,
Milwaukee wouldn’t even see the joke.”
But it was not necessary that I live in Milwaukee a year or so in order
to understand its peculiarities, for I had a personal conductor and
efficient guide in the new friend that had come into my life with the
first day of my work on the Post. Surely no woman ever had a stronger
friend than little “Blackie” Griffith, sporting editor of the Milwaukee
Post. We became friends, not step by step, but in one gigantic leap
such as sometimes triumphs over the gap between acquaintance and
liking.
I never shall forget my first glimpse of him. He strolled into the city
room from his little domicile across the hall. A shabby, disreputable,
out-at-elbows office coat was worn over his ultra-smart street clothes,
and he was puffing at a freakish little pipe in the shape of a
miniature automobile. He eyed me a moment from the doorway, a
fantastic, elfin little figure. I thought that I had never seen so
strange and so ugly a face as that of this little brown Welshman with
his lank, black hair and his deep-set, uncanny black eyes. Suddenly he
trotted over to me with a quick little step. In the doorway he had
looked forty. Now a smile illumined the many lines of his dark
countenance, and in some miraculous way he looked twenty.
“Are you the New York importation?” he, asked, his great black eyes
searching my face.
“I’m what’s left of it,” I replied, meekly.
“I understand you’ve been in for repairs. Must of met up with somethin’
on the road. They say the goin’ is full of bumps in N’ York.”
“Bumps!” I laughed, “it’s uphill every bit of the road, and yet you’ve
got to go full speed to get anywhere. But I’m running easily again,
thank you.”
He waved away a cloud of pipe-smoke, and knowingly squinted through the
haze. “We don’t speed up much here. And they ain’t no hill climbin’ t’
speak of. But say, if you ever should hit a nasty place on the route,
toot your siren for me and I’ll come. I’m a regular little human garage
when it comes to patchin’ up those aggravatin’ screws that need oilin’.
And, say, don’t let Norberg bully you. My name’s Blackie. I’m goin’ t’
like you. Come on over t’ my sanctum once in a while and I’ll show you
my scrapbook and let you play with the office revolver.”
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 never
went to school to speak of. He doesn’t know was from were. But he can
“see” a story quicker, and farther and clearer than any newspaper man I
ever knew—excepting Peter Orme.
There is a legend about to the effect that one day the managing editor,
who is Scotch and without a sense of humor, ordered that Blackie should
henceforth be addressed by his surname of Griffith, as being a more
dignified appellation for the use of fellow reporters, hangers-on, copy
kids, office boys and others about the big building.
The day after the order was issued the managing editor summoned a
freckled youth and thrust a sheaf of galley proofs into his hand.
“Take those to Mr. Griffith,” he ordered without looking up.
“T’ who?”
“To Mr. Griffith,” said the managing editor, laboriously, and scowling
a bit.
The boy took three unwilling steps toward the door. Then he turned a
puzzled face toward the managing editor.
“Say, honest, I ain’t never heard of dat guy. He must be a new one.
W’ere’ll I find him?”
“Oh, damn! Take those proofs to Blackie!” roared the managing editor.
And thus ended Blackie’s enforced flight into the realms of dignity.
All these things, and more, I wrote to the scandalized Norah. I
informed her that he wore more diamond rings and scarf pins and watch
fobs than a railroad conductor, and that his checked top-coat shrieked
to Heaven.
There came back a letter in which every third word was underlined, and
which ended by asking what the morals of such a man could be.
Then I tried to make Blackie more real to Norah who, in all her
sheltered life, had never come in contact with a man like this.
“... As for his morals—or what you would consider his morals, Sis—they
probably are a deep crimson; but I’ll swear there is no yellow streak.
I never have heard anything more pathetic than his story. Blackie sold
papers on a down-town corner when he was a baby six years old. Then he
got a job as office boy here, and he used to sharpen pencils, and run
errands, and carry copy. After office hours he took care of some horses
in an alley barn near by, and after that work was done he was employed
about the pressroom of one of the old German newspaper offices.
Sometimes he would be too weary to crawl home after working half the
night, and so he would fall asleep, a worn, tragic little figure, on a
pile of old papers and sacks in a warm corner near the presses. He was
the head of a household, and every penny counted. And all the time he
was watching things, and learning. Nothing escaped those keen black
eyes. He used to help the photographer when there was a pile of plates
to develop, and presently he knew more about photography than the man
himself. So they made him staff photographer. In some marvelous way he
knew more ball players, and fighters and horsemen than the sporting
editor. He had a nose for news that was nothing short of wonderful. He
never went out of the office without coming back with a story. They
used to use him in the sporting department when a rush was on. Then he
became one of the sporting staff; then assistant sporting editor; then
sporting editor. He knows this paper from the basement up. He could
operate a linotype or act as managing editor with equal ease.
“No, I’m afraid that Blackie hasn’t had much time for morals. But,
Norah dear, I wish that you could hear him when he talks about his
mother. He may follow doubtful paths, and associate with questionable
people, and wear restless clothes, but I wouldn’t exchange his
friendship for that of a dozen of your ordinary so-called good men. All
these years of work and suffering have made an old man of little
Blackie, although he is young in years. But they haven’t spoiled his
heart any. He is able to distinguish between sham and truth because he
has been obliged to do it ever since he was a child selling papers on
the corner. But he still clings to the office that gave him his start,
although he makes more money in a single week outside the office than
his salary would amount to in half a year. He says that this is a job
that does not interfere with his work.”
Such is Blackie. Surely the oddest friend a woman ever had. He
possesses a genius for friendship, and a wonderful understanding of
suffering, born of those years of hardship and privation. Each learned
the other’s story, bit by bit, in a series of confidences exchanged
during that peaceful, beatific period that follows just after the last
edition has gone down. Blackie’s little cubby-hole of an office is
always blue with smoke, and cluttered with a thousand odds and
ends—photographs, souvenirs, boxing-gloves, a litter of pipes and
tobacco, a wardrobe of dust-covered discarded coats and hats, and
Blackie in the midst of it all, sunk in the depths of his swivel chair,
and looking like an amiable brown gnome, or a cheerful little
joss-house god come to life. There is in him an uncanny wisdom which
only the streets can teach. He is one of those born newspaper men who
could not live out of sight of the ticker-tape, and the copy-hook and
the proof-sheet.
“Y’ see, girl, it’s like this here,” Blackie explained one day. “W’re
all workin’ for some good reason. A few of us are workin’ for the glory
of it, and most of us are workin’ t’ eat, and lots of us are pluggin’
an’ savin’ in the hopes that some day we’ll have money enough to get
back at some people we know; but there is some few workin’ for the pure
love of the work—and I guess I’m one of them fools. Y’ see, I started
in at this game when I was such a little runt that now it’s a ingrowing
habit, though it is comfortin’ t’ know you got a place where you c’n
always come in out of the rain, and where you c’n have your mail sent.”
“This newspaper work is a curse,” I remarked. “Show me a clever
newspaper man and I’ll show you a failure. There is nothing in it but
the glory—and little of that. We contrive and scheme and run about all
day getting a story. And then we write it at fever heat, searching our
souls for words that are cleancut and virile. And then we turn it in,
and what is it? What have we to show for our day’s work? An ephemeral
thing, lacking the first breath of life; a thing that is dead before it
is born. Why, any cub reporter, if he were to put into some other
profession the same amount of nerve, and tact, and ingenuity and
finesse, and stick-to-it-iveness that he expends in prying a single
story out of some unwilling victim, could retire with a fortune in no
time.”
Blackie blew down the stem of his pipe, preparatory to re-filling the
bowl. There was a quizzical light in his black eyes. The little heap of
burned matches at his elbow was growing to kindling wood proportions.
It was common knowledge that Blackie’s trick of lighting pipe or
cigarette and then forgetting to puff at it caused his bill for matches
to exceed his tobacco expense account.
“You talk,” chuckled Blackie, “like you meant it. But sa-a-ay, girl,
it’s a lonesome game, this retirin’ with a fortune. I’ve noticed that
them guys who retire with a barrel of money usually dies at the end of
the first year, of a kind of a lingerin’ homesickness. You c’n see
their pictures in th’ papers, with a pathetic story of how they was
just beginnin’ t’ enjoy life when along comes the grim reaper an’
claims ’em.”
Blackie slid down in his chair and blew a column of smoke ceilingward.
“I knew a guy once—newspaper man, too—who retired with a fortune. He
used to do the city hall for us. Well, he got in soft with the new
administration before election, and made quite a pile in stocks that
was tipped off to him by his political friends. His wife was crazy for
him to quit the newspaper game. He done it. An’ say, that guy kept on
gettin’ richer and richer till even his wife was almost satisfied. But
sa-a-ay, girl, was that chap lonesome! One day he come up here looking
like a dog that’s run off with the steak. He was just dyin’ for a kind
word, an’ he sniffed the smell of the ink and the hot metal like it was
June roses. He kind of wanders over to his old desk and slumps down in
the chair, and tips it back, and puts his feet on the desk, with his
hat tipped back, and a bum stogie in his mouth. And along came a kid
with a bunch of papers wet from the presses and sticks one in his hand,
and—well, girl, that fellow, he just wriggled he was so happy. You know
as well as I do that every man on a morning paper spends his day off
hanging around the office wishin’ that a mob or a fire or somethin’ big
would tear lose so he could get back into the game. I guess I told you
about the time Von Gerhard sent me abroad, didn’t I?”
“Von Gerhard!” I repeated, startled. “Do you know him?”
“Well, he ain’t braggin’ about it none,” Blackie admitted. “Von
Gerhard, he told me I had about five years or so t’ live, about two,
three years ago. He don’t approve of me. Pried into my private life,
old Von Gerhard did, somethin’ scand’lous. I had sort of went to pieces
about that time, and I went t’ him to be patched up. He thumps me fore
‘an’ aft, firing a volley of questions, lookin’ up the roof of m’
mouth, and squintin’ at m’ finger nails an’ teeth like I was a prize
horse for sale. Then he sits still, lookin’ at me for about half a
minute, till I begin t’ feel uncomfortable. Then he says, slow: ‘Young
man, how old are you?’
“‘O, twenty-eight or so,’ I says, airy.
“‘My Gawd!’ said he. ‘You’ve crammed twice those years into your life,
and you’ll have to pay for it. Now you listen t’ me. You got t’ quit
workin’, an’ smokin’, and get away from this. Take a ocean voyage,’ he
says, ’an’ try to get four hours sleep a night, anyway.’
“Well say, mother she was scared green. So I tucked her under m’ arm,
and we hit it up across the ocean. Went t’ Germany, knowin’ that it
would feel homelike there, an’ we took in all the swell baden, and
chased up the Jungfrau—sa-a-ay, that’s a classy little mountain, that
Jungfrau. Mother, she had some swell time I guess. She never set down
except for meals, and she wrote picture postals like mad. But sa-a-ay,
girl, was I lonesome! Maybe that trip done me good. Anyway, I’m livin’
yet. I stuck it out for four months, an’ that ain’t so rotten for a guy
who just grew up on printer’s ink ever since he was old enough to hold
a bunch of papers under his arm. Well, one day mother an’ me was
sittin’ out on one of them veranda cafes they run to over there, w’en
somebody hits me a crack on the shoulder, an’ there stands old Ryan who
used t’ do A. P. here. He was foreign correspondent for some big New
York syndicate papers over there.
“‘Well if it ain’t Blackie!’ he says. ‘What in Sam Hill are you doing
out of your own cell when Milwaukee’s just got four more games t’ win
the pennant?’
“Sa-a-a-ay, girl, w’en I got through huggin’ him around the neck an’
buyin’ him drinks I knew it was me for the big ship. ‘Mother,’ I says,
‘if you got anybody on your mind that you neglected t’ send picture
postals to, now’s’ your last chance. ’F I got to die I’m going out with
m’ scissors in one mitt, and m’ trusty paste-pot by m’ side!’ An’ we
hits it up for old Milwaukee. I ain’t been away since, except w’en I
was out with the ball team, sending in sportin’ extry dope for the pink
sheet. The last time I was in at Baumbach’s in comes Von Gerhard an’—”
“Who are Baumbach’s?” I interrupted.
Blackie regarded me pityingly. “You ain’t never been to Baumbach’s? Why
girl, if you don’t know Baumbach’s, you ain’t never been properly
introduced to Milwaukee. No wonder you ain’t hep to the ways of this
little community. There ain’t what the s’ciety editor would call the
proper ontong cordyal between you and the natives if you haven’t had
coffee at Baumbach’s. It ain’t hardly legal t’ live in Milwaukee all
this time without ever having been inside of B—”
“Stop! If you do not tell me at once just where this wonderful place
may be found, and what one does when one finds it, and how I happened
to miss it, and why it is so necessary to the proper understanding of
the city—”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Blackie, grinning, “I’ll romp you
over there to-morrow afternoon at four o’clock. Ach Himmel! What will
that for a grand time be, no?”
“Blackie, you’re a dear to be so polite to an old married cratur’ like
me. Did you notice—that is, does Ernst von Gerhard drop in often at
Baumbach’s?”