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.
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