had been in town a fortnight before he gave me a dinner and had some of his
friends to meet me. Among these was a young fellow of the name of Halstead,
who, I was told, was the coming man on the Commercial.

Round to the Commercial office I sped, and being conducted to this person,
who received me very blandly, I said: "Mr. Halstead, I am a journeyman day
laborer in your city--the merest bird of passage, with my watch at the
pawnbroker's. As soon as I am able to get out of town I mean to go--and
I came to ask if you can think the personal allusions to me in to-day's
paper, which may lose me my job but can nowise hurt the Times, are quite
fair--even--since I am without defense--quite manly."

He looked at me with that quizzical, serio-comic stare which so became him,
and with great heartiness replied: "No--they were damned mean--though I
did not realize how mean. The mark was so obvious and tempting I could not
resist, but--there shall be no more of them. Come, let us go and have a
drink."

That was the beginning of a friendship which brought happiness to both of
us and lasted nearly half a century, to the hour of his death, when, going
from Louisville to Cincinnati, I helped to lay him away in Spring Grove
Cemetery.

I had no thought of remaining in Cincinnati. My objective was Nashville,
where the young woman who was to become my wife, and whom I had not seen
for nearly two years, was living with her family. During the summer Mr.
Francisco, the business manager of the Evening Times, had a scheme to buy
the Toledo Commercial, in conjunction with Mr. Comly, of Columbus, and to
engage me as editor conjointly with Mr. Harrison Gray Otis as publisher. It
looked very good. Toledo threatened Cleveland and Detroit as a lake port.