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 1*75-1^5' J^~ 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/happeningsherethOObrad 
 
ARTHUR 
 
 RICHARD 
 
 DAVID 
 
 PAUL 
 
 GRANT 
 
 These Five 
 In the Order Named 
 
 Suggested This 
 Screed and Booklet. 
 
 On Their Shoulders 
 
 Rests the 
 
 Responsibility. 
 
AP PEN I N GS here and there 
 
 along the Trail, or "The World went 
 
 very Well then." A VICTORIAN 
 
 Tale gleaned from Memories and Told 
 
 for the Edification of Fellow 
 
 Typophiles 
 
 wb 
 
 j&* 
 
 Pasadena 
 1949 
 
 
/09-f 
 
 6X/l££ /3-ya-dLC 
 
 7 
 
In the Days of the Wooden Indian 
 
 Being a few Brief Bits of 
 
 Ancient History. 
 
 It is graduation day in the little brown schoolhouse on 
 Baltimore street in Lynn. Miss Parrot is the teacher 
 — a dear! You are six years old; next month you will 
 be seven. The blackboard is covered with chalk drawings: 
 sailboats, steamboats, ferryboats, trains of cars, houses, 
 people and animals. You are the artist. Your mamma, with 
 other mammas, is sitting on the platform, proud of her 
 Willie — who is probably plenty proud of himself. 
 
 Lynn is a shoe town. This is 1875. Most of the work is 
 done by hand. The employees are all natives — Universal- 
 ists and Unitarians, probably. Many women work at 
 home, binding uppers and tongues of high, lace shoes. 
 You have a little express wagon. You carry finished work 
 back to the factories and return with a supply of un- 
 finished. For each trip you are paid five cents. With your 
 savings you buy a printing press. It is the kind you place 
 on a table and slap with the palm of your hand. In busi- 
 ness offices it is used to stamp date lines. Your father is 
 
 to 
 
drawing cartoons for a Lynn daily — perhaps the Daily 
 Item. He brings you a box of pi. When you succeed in 
 finding a few letters of the same font you file them to fit 
 the type slot in the press. 
 
 Your father is ill, an aftermath of the Civil War. You 
 have moved to the section called Swanscott. This is too 
 far away for you to attend the school to which your class 
 has gone. Your mother goes out every day to do dress- 
 making. A playmate takes you to his school. But most of 
 the time you remain at home with your father. He tells 
 you he hasn't long to live, says you have been a good boy 
 and that when you grow up you will want to be an artist 
 and there will be no money for your education. He gives 
 you much fine advice which you never forget. Then he 
 sends you out to play. You go to Fisherman's beach and 
 watch the fishermen take lobsters out of the boiling pot. 
 They give you the little ones the law forbids selling. You 
 crack them on a rock, and have a feast. Sunday morn- 
 ings, or occasionally on a Saturday night, you go to the 
 baker's and get your warm pot of baked beans and buy a 
 loaf of brown-bread — always an event of delicious an- 
 ticipation. Between meals, when you are hungry, there 
 is often a cold cod-fish cake to be found in the pantry. 
 
 v J&* 
 
 Xour mother and you are now alone in the world and 
 you are on the "Narrow Gage" on your way to Boston. 
 You are sucking a "picklelime," always found in glass jars 
 at the candy counter of every railroad and ferry waiting 
 room. It will be made to last until you reach Boston and 
 are at the Park street corner of the Common watching 
 the Punch and Judy show while your mother is shop- 
 
 [2] 
 
ping. At noon you sit in a booth and eat clam chowder 
 at a restaurant on Corn Hill. After the meal your mother 
 takes you to a wholesale house where she has a friend. 
 Here you are bought a suit of clothes. 
 
 "But isn't it too big, Mamma?" 
 
 "Yes, dear; but children grow very fast and soon it will 
 fit you— and Mamma can't afford to buy you a new suit 
 every year?" 
 
 A ^ 
 
 iJLND now you are on your way to Northern Michigan, 
 where your mother has a sister whose husband is pay- 
 master at the Lake Superior Iron Mine. En route you 
 stop at Providence where you are intrigued by the teams 
 of twenty or more horses that pull freight cars through 
 the down- town districts. You think it would be fine to be 
 a teamster. At Thompsonville, Connecticut, you go to 
 school for a few weeks. On circus day you are allowed 
 to have a vacation. You ride a pony in the parade and ask 
 your mother if you can't join the circus and ride in the 
 parades every day. 
 
 It is your first day in the little mining town of Ishpem- 
 ing. You are standing in the middle of the road watching 
 children going home from school; the girls giggle, the 
 boys laugh at the new boy in a too-big suit. One little 
 girl has cute pigtails. You like her. You are now quite 
 grown up, nearly ten. At a Sunday-school picnic you 
 tell the little girl you are someday going back to Boston 
 and learn to be an artist. You ask her to wait for you. 
 She promises. With this important problem settled you 
 can now give all of your attention to the question of how 
 you are to get an art education. 
 
 m 
 
In the fall you go to school and somehow manage to 
 pull through. Your uncle and aunt go for a visit "back 
 East." Your mother keeps house for your cousins. Every 
 night when you go to bed you kneel down and ask God 
 to tell your uncle to bring you a printing press, the kind 
 with a lever, like the ones shown in the Youth's Com- 
 panion. Your uncle brings you an Ingersoll dollar watch. 
 
 It is your second year in school. You now have a step- 
 father. He is a fine man and you like him and he likes 
 you — but of course you can't expect him to pay for your 
 art education. You are having trouble with arithmetic — 
 something in division. Teacher says, "Take your books 
 and go home, Willie, and remain until you have the cor- 
 rect answer." 
 
 You don't like arithmetic, anyway. 
 
 "Mother," you ask, "may I go to work and earn money 
 so I can learn to be an artist?" 
 
 Your mother is troubled. Finally she says, "Perhaps it 
 will be for the best. I hope so." 
 
 v jp- 
 
 Jou go to the office of the Iron Agitato? ', that later 
 became Iron Ore. George A. Newett is the owner and 
 editor. This is the George A. Newett and the newspaper 
 that were later sued for libel by Theodore Roosevelt. 
 The trial took place in Marquette, Michigan, and Mr. 
 Roosevelt won a verdict of six cents. 
 
 You are put to work washing-up a Gordon. Then you 
 receive your first lesson in feeding. There is power, a 
 small engine mounted on an upright boiler, for the news- 
 paper press. The two jobbers are kicked. Having half an 
 hour of leisure you learn the lay of a lower case beside the 
 
 [4} 
 
window — where you can proudly wave to the school- 
 children as they are going home to their noon meal. You 
 are now a working man — wages three dollars a week. 
 
 •ountry newspaper shops train and use local help for 
 straight matter. For job work, ads and presswork they 
 depend upon itinerant job printers, who seldom remain 
 as long as six months in any one town. When the Iron Ore 
 job printer leaves you are sorry. He has been a kind and 
 patient teacher. You are now twelve. Mr. Newett em- 
 ploys a new devil and you set jobs, advertising display, 
 make up the paper and are responsible for all presswork. 
 Your wages are increased to six dollars a week. When the 
 motor power fails, as it does frequently, you go out on the 
 street and employ off -shift miners to operate the press by 
 means of a crank attached to the flywheel. 
 
 At this early date the print shop is above a saloon and 
 in one corner of a big barn of a room that had been a 
 lodge hall. In winter it is heated (?) with one stove. You 
 go to work at seven and quit at six. The outside tempera- 
 ture is below zero. You and your devil forage in the 
 snowdrifts of the alley back of the building and "borrow" 
 packing boxes to get kindling for the stove and boiler. 
 
 m 
 
The Peninsula Record, across the street, is a four page 
 tabloid. It is printed one page at a time on a large Gor- 
 don. The owner and editor is John D. West. He offers 
 you eight dollars a week. You are not that important to 
 Mr. Newett — and the extra two dollars will enable you to 
 begin saving after paying board and buying your clothes. 
 
 In a few months Iron Ore moves into a new store- 
 building. You are now thirteen and Mr. Newett offers 
 you ten dollars a week and the acknowledged position of 
 job printer. At fourteen this wage is increased to twelve. 
 At fifteen you are spoken of as foreman and are receiving 
 fifteen a week — in '85 a man's wages. 
 
 x 
 
 j^ 
 
 his is the early Eighties. Small towns such as 
 Ishpeming are "easy pickings" for traveling fakirs. Their 
 advance is always heralded by the exchanges. They clean 
 up at the expense of local merchants. All editors warn 
 them to keep away. Iron Ore print shop is on the ground 
 floor. The editor's sanctum is at the front. His desk is 
 at the big window. It is nearly nine o'clock on a Friday 
 night — "makeup" time. Mr. Newett has written his last 
 sheets of copy and is reading proof. At the corner of 
 Main and Division, diagonally across from the office, a 
 fakir is selling soap. In one wrapper he pretends to place 
 a five dollar bill — a version of the "old army game." He 
 is standing in a market wagon and has a companion who 
 strums a guitar and sings. Attached to an upright and 
 above his head is a kerosene flare. Mr. Newett walks 
 leisurely to where there are several guns and fishing rods 
 in a corner. He is an inveterate sportsman in a land where 
 game, deer and fish, is plentiful. Selecting a rifle he walks 
 
 [6] 
 
to the door and casually puts a bullet through the kero- 
 sene tank, then returns to his proof reading. Thoroughly- 
 likeable, this pioneer editor — a fine boss, a true friend! 
 
 You and a compositor now have control of the town 
 bill posting. When there is no theatre paper or patent 
 medicine ads to put up you cover the boards with blank 
 newsprint and letter and picture advertisements for the 
 stores, or what you will. 
 
 You are sixteen, almost seventeen. A sheet of newsprint 
 is tacked on the printing-office wall and, using marking 
 ink and a brush, you are picturing and lettering a mas- 
 querade poster for the roller rink. 
 
 "Who is this young artist?" 
 
 The speaker is Frank Bromley, a well-known landscape 
 painter from Chicago. 
 
 You tell him about your father and that you are going 
 back to Boston to study art. He suggests your stopping 
 off in Chicago to see him. Says he can perhaps help you. 
 
 You are nearly seventeen and already you have saved 
 more than fifty dollars. By the early fall you have four 
 twenty-dollar gold pieces under your socks in the top till 
 of your trunk. Wages are always paid in gold and silver. 
 You are now ready to start for Chicago. Two weeks later 
 you are on your way. 
 
 [7] 
 
The artist has a studio near the McVickar Theatre on 
 Madison street. It is the typical atelier of the Victorian 
 Eighties: oriental drapes, screens and pottery. Jules 
 Guerin, then an art student and later a contributor to 
 Century, Harper's and Scribner's, is clearing up and tidy- 
 ing for the day. 
 
 Mr. Bromley takes you to Lyon & Healy. Yes, Mr. 
 Lyon, or maybe it was Mr. Healy, can start you as an 
 apprentice. However, a young man beginning a career 
 should be most careful in making his selection. You have 
 been careful. You want to be an artist. But the business 
 of Lyon & Healy is musical instruments, not art. 
 
 N ^ 
 
 1 >l ext morning you are introduced to Mr. Rand, or Mr. 
 McNally. A Mr. Martin then sends you upstairs, a couple 
 of flights, to Mr. Robinson in the designing and engrav- 
 ing department. Beginners do not receive any pay, but 
 you are put to work at a long table facing a row of 
 windows and with yards and yards of unbleached cotton- 
 cloth stretched on a wire at your back. You are now 
 learning to cut tints — under the erroneous impression that 
 designers and illustrators engrave their own blocks. 
 
 Mr. Bromley has found a room for you at the home of 
 a friend, an art dealer. It is at Vincennes ave. and Fifty- 
 ninth street. You walk to and from Rand McNally's, 
 located on Monroe street, dreaming happily. 
 
 One morning, after a few weeks of getting nowhere, 
 for you are no master of tint-cutting, it percolates through 
 your skull that inasmuch as wood engravers never seem 
 to be doing any designing probably designers never do 
 any engraving. 
 
 [8] 
 
A momentous discovery, this, for you have broken into 
 your last twenty-dollar gold piece — as a matter of fact 
 there is just about enough left to pay for taking your 
 trunk to the depot and to buy a second-class ticket back 
 to that print shop in Northern Michigan. 
 
 A 
 
 "Sometime, if you care to come back," states Mr. Rob- 
 inson, in a letter which must have been written immedi- 
 ately after your departure, "and if you will remain half an 
 hour later in the evening and sweep out, and come in a 
 half hour earlier in the morning and dust, Rand McNally 
 will pay you three dollars a week." 
 
 few months later, when you have just turned into 
 your eighteenth year and have saved sixty dollars, three 
 twenty-dollar gold pieces, it is time to return to Chicago. 
 You tell Mr. Newett. He wishes you well and says that 
 if you care to remain with Iron Ore he will take you into 
 partnership when you are twenty. This is a big tempta- 
 tion. You admire and like your boss. He is a grand per- 
 son — your idol. Saying good-bye involves a wrench. 
 
 You are now back with R. M., staying half an hour at 
 night and getting to work a half hour earlier in the morn- 
 ing and all is well with the world. 
 
 C9} 
 
At the time of your first visit to Chicago line photo- 
 engraving was not even a whisper, and half-tones were 
 not even dreams. On your second visit, pen drawings are 
 beginning to receive direct reproduction. 
 
 Xolding machines are unknown; and in a large loft, at 
 long tables, dozens upon dozens of girls are hand-folding 
 railroad timetables. This loft is on a level with the de- 
 signing department. Between the two there is a brick 
 wall through which, about two feet up from the floor, has 
 been cut an opening in which there is a heavy, tin-covered 
 sliding door. When you take 14x22 metal plates down to 
 the foundry to be routed — by someone else, for you don't 
 like machine — you pass through this loft, between the 
 girl-adorned tables. You, in turn, are adorned with the 
 side-whiskers known as mutton-chops — trying to look 
 older than your years. Also, in accord with the custom 
 of the times, you wear tight-fitting pants. One day, in 
 returning from the foundry with a metal plate on your 
 shoulder, you pull back the sliding door and when you 
 lift one leg to step through the opening the pants rip 
 where the cloth is tightest. On another occasion when 
 again carrying a plate on your shoulder your jacket- 
 pocket catches on a key at the end of a paper-cutter shaft 
 and the shoddy that had once proved so disastrous in your 
 pants now probably averts a serious accident. 
 
 Web presses and automatic feeders are also absent. 
 In the basement at Rand McNally's there is a battery of 
 drum-cylinders printing James S. Kirk "American Family 
 Soap" wrappers. The stock is thin, red-glazed paper, and 
 the sheets a double 24x36, or perhaps even larger. You 
 
 [10] 
 
marvel at the skill with which boys do the feeding; but 
 even greater is your wonder at the hand-jogging and cut- 
 ting of these slippery and flimsy sheets. 
 
 Invitations are sent out for an inspection of the com- 
 posing-room of the Chicago Herald, newly equipped 
 throughout with Hamilton labor-saving furniture. You 
 attend. Compositors are sticking type for the next edition. 
 A little later the Herald places on display its first web 
 press. This showing is in a ground-floor room, a step or 
 two down from the street, next door to the Chicago Opera 
 House, where Kiralphry's Black Crook is now playing 
 and Eddie Foy is putting audiences in "stitches." The 
 press is a single unit standing in a shallow pit surrounded 
 by a brass rail. 
 
 c 
 
 omes now the winter. It is a Saturday. You are at 
 the home of your boss. He has invited you to spend the 
 afternoon learning how to paint. His easel is set up in the 
 basement dining room. He is talking to you about re- 
 ligion, gravely concerned at learning you sometimes 
 attend the Universalist church. He believes you to be a 
 heathen and suggests that you become converted and join 
 a fundamentalist church — says that as long as you remain 
 outside the fold and thus are not a Christian he cannot be 
 interested in helping you become an artist. 
 
 n 1} 
 
The dear man! He wants so much to save your soul. 
 Meanwhile, his good wife is laying the table for their 
 evening meal. Her smile is motherly. Maybe she has 
 guessed you were counting the plates. Pleasant odors 
 come from the kitchen. Our gracious host brings your 
 coat, helps you put it on, hands you your hat, opens the 
 door and you step out into a Chicago snowstorm. 
 
 At this point the script calls for slow music and heart- 
 rending sobs — another Kate Claxton in the Two Orphans. 
 Alas for melodrama! This is a beautiful snowstorm. The 
 evening is mild and the flakes are big. They sail lazily 
 through the amber light of the street lamps, feather the 
 bare branches of trees that print a fantastic pattern against 
 the red-brick housefronts. The drifts must be at least an 
 inch deep. And tomorrow . . . tomorrow, you will, as 
 always happens on Sunday, go to a restaurant on Clark 
 street where you will be served two pork tenderloins, 
 flanked by a mound of mashed potatoes topped with 
 gravy, and one other vegetable, and supplemented by 
 bread and butter and a cup of coffee — all for twenty 
 cents. Joy bells ringing! 
 
 A ■ ^ 
 
 jTjl couple of weeks later you are standing at a case in 
 the printing plant of Knight & Leonard. Mr. Leonard 
 happens to be passing. He stops and glances at your galley, 
 type arrangement for a catalog cover. He is interested 
 and asks where you learned job composition. In one 
 graphically condensed paragraph, dramatically composed, 
 for it has been prepared in advance in anticipation of this 
 much wished-for opportunity, you tell the story of your 
 life — and make a momentous proposition. 
 
 [12} 
 
The next morning you are seated at a flat-top desk in 
 the second-floor office. You have your drawing material 
 and are designing a booklet cover for the stationery de- 
 partment of A. C. McClurg. It is understood that when 
 orders for drawings fail you will fill in by setting type. 
 
 N ^ 
 
 1 ^low you are, at nineteen, a full-fledged designer and 
 working at a window opposite Spalding's. On playing 
 days you watch Pop Anson and his bewhiskered team 
 enter a barge and depart for the ball park. 
 
 One day a young man appears at K. & L.'s with proofs 
 of halftone engravings. He has been with the Mathews 
 Northrup Press in Buffalo, where he had learned the pro- 
 cess. He is now starting an engraving plant in Chicago. 
 K. & L. print some specimen sheets on coated paper. These 
 are probably the first halftones ever engraved in Chicago, 
 also the first printing of halftones. K. & L. are Chicago's 
 leading commercial printers, quality considered. Mr. 
 Knight is a retired Board of Trade operator. Mr. Leonard 
 is the practical printer. He is also the father of Lillian 
 Russell. Once, when she is appearing in Chicago, Miss 
 Russell visits at the office. You are thrilled. 
 
 A man, trained in Germany, grinds ink for K. & L. He 
 is located on the floor above the office. You occasionally 
 visit him. He gives you much good advice. The Inter 
 Ocean, located on the next corner, installs a color press. 
 The K. & L. ink expert helps get out the first edition. 
 
 For two years or more you occupy that desk and never 
 again see the composing room. During this period, while 
 receiving twenty-four a week, you marry that young 
 lady of your ten-year-old romance. 
 
The J. M. W. Jeff ery Co., show printers, is turning out 
 some swell posters designed by Will Crane. They are 
 printed from woodblocks and are wonders. An artist by 
 the name of Frank Getty is designing labels in the Chicago 
 sales-office of the Crump Label Co. They are a glorious 
 departure from the conventional truck of the label litho- 
 graphers. Joe Lyendecker is designing covers in color for 
 paper bound novels. They are gorgeous. There are no 
 art magazines or other publications helpful to designers. 
 You, like others, have a scrap-book made up of booklet 
 covers, cards and other forms of advertising. A designer 
 by the name of Bridwell is doing some thrilling work for 
 Mathews Northrup in Buffalo, a concern that is setting a 
 stiff pace for other railroad printers. Abbey, Parsons, 
 Smedley, Frost and Pennell, and Charles Graham in 
 Harpefs Weekly, are models for all illustrators. Some of 
 the leading painters are working on the panoramas — Battle 
 of Gettysburg and others. They are well paid and happy. 
 Eugene Field, Francis Wilson, when in town, Irving Way 
 and others of their ilk meet in Mr. Millard's rare book de- 
 partment at A. C. McClurg's — the "Amen" corner. You 
 are now free-lancing and making designs for Mr. Kasten 
 of the McClurg stationery department. He and Mr. 
 Millard find an excuse to permit of your hanging around 
 on the edges of these bookish gatherings. George Ade 
 is writing a column for the News. John McCutcheon, 
 who is one day to become Theodore Roosevelt's favorite 
 cartoonist, is just beginning his newspaper career. At the 
 Press Club you meet Stanley Weyman, Opie Reed, Ben 
 King, Peter Finley Dunne, Nixon Waterman, and a few 
 other newspaper notables. Soon you are to know and 
 enjoy the friendship of Harriet Monroe. 
 
 £14} 
 
You now have a studio in the new Caxton building on 
 Dearborn street. You work all of one day and night and 
 part of the next day on some drawings for Mr. Kasten. 
 He comes to get them at four o'clock on the afternoon 
 before Christmas. You haven't eaten since the previous 
 night. He takes you and your drawings in a cab and stops 
 at a saloon in the McVickar Theatre building and buys 
 you an egg nog. "Drink this," he says. "It will put you on 
 your feet until you reach home and can get dinner." It is 
 only a glass of milk and egg and looks harmless. You get 
 on the Madison street horse-car, and take a seat up front. 
 There is straw on the floor to keep your feet warm. You 
 promptly go to sleep. The car bumps across some tracks 
 and you wake long enpugh to know your stop is only 
 two blocks away. In getting off the car the straw tangles 
 your feet and you seem to be falling over everyone. The 
 sidewalk is not wide enough and, this being a new section, 
 the planks are a foot or more above the ground. You walk 
 in the road. 
 
 i 
 
 n these early Nineties no cash is needed to buy a print- 
 ing outfit, just an agreement to pay a monthly instalment. 
 You buy a Golding press, a typestand, a small stone and a 
 few cases of Caslon and an English text. You are probably 
 itching to play a little with printing. You do not find 
 
 C15] 
 
time to do more than lay the type. A letter comes from 
 your wife's sister in South Dakota. It states that a neigh- 
 bor's son or brother, or some near relative, is in Chicago, 
 that he is interested in art, and it asks will you look him 
 up. He is a bookkeeper and cashier in a ground floor 
 real estate office at the corner of Clark and Dearborn. 
 His name is Fred Goudy. He wants to get into the print- 
 ing business, in a small way. You tell him of your small 
 outfit and that he can have it and the benefit of payments 
 made if he will assume future instalments. He agrees. 
 
 Y J&* 
 
 Xour studio is now in the Monadnock building. It is 
 the year of the World's Fair. You have an exhibit that has 
 entitled you to a pass. Jim Corbett is in a show on the 
 Midway. When he is not on the stage you can see him 
 parading on the sidewalks. Buffalo Bill is appearing in a 
 Wild West show. An edition of Fuck is being printed in 
 one of the exhibition buildings. 
 
 You design a cover for a Chicago and Alton Railroad 
 folder. The drawing goes to Rand McNally for engrav- 
 ing and printing. Mr. Martin asks you to come and see 
 him. His salary offer is flattering. But, aside from Brid- 
 well's designs at Mathews Northrup's in Buffalo, railroad 
 printing is in a long-established rut and void of imagina- 
 tion. You prefer free-lancing. Later Mr. Martin buys the 
 K. & L. plant. Herbert Rogers, the former bookkeeper, 
 establishes his own plant and you hope he will continue 
 the K. & L. tradition. 
 
 You have moved out to Geneva, 111., on the Fox river, 
 and you are designing covers for Harper's Weekly, 
 Bazaar and Round Table, posters for Stone and Kimball, 
 
monthly covers for Inland Printer — probably the first 
 monthly change of a cover design on any periodical, and 
 full pages for the Sunday editions of a Chicago daily. 
 
 Will Davis, manager of the Columbia Theatre, has just 
 built the Haymarket, out on west Madison at Halstead. 
 You design and illustrate the opening night souvenir 
 booklet. This you do for Mr. Kasten, of McClure's. Thus 
 you meet Mr. Davis. He introduces you to Dan Froh- 
 man who commissions you to design a twenty-eight sheet 
 stand for his brother, Charles, who is about to open the 
 new Empire Theatre in New York. You design a poster 
 for The Masqueraders, by Henry Arthur Jones. Dan 
 suggests that you visit New York. You do, and meet 
 Charles. Dan takes you to the Players for lunch. There 
 you see show-bills set in Caslon. They influence all of 
 your future work in the field of typography. 
 
 4 S» \ J i\% 
 
 A, 
 
 nd now we are in the Gay Nineties, the mid Gay 
 Nineties, when a haircloth sofa adorns every parlor and 
 people see beauty in overdecoration, when our intelli- 
 gentsia are reading Anthony Hope's Prizoner of Zenda, 
 Stanley Weyman's Gentlemen of France and George 
 McCutcheon's Graustark, when William Morris is print- 
 
 [17} 
 
ing Chaucer, with illustrations by Burne-Jones, and Au- 
 brey Beardsley is providing an ample excuse for the Yel- 
 low Book, when LeGallienne's Golden Girl is brought 
 over here by John Lane and established in a bookshop on 
 lower Fifth Ave., and Bliss Carmen is singing his songs of 
 rare beauty, when the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the nearby 
 Algonquin are flourishing Madison Square hostleries, 
 when Stern's and McCreery are across the street from 
 Putnam's and Eden Musee, and the modern skyscraper is 
 only an architect's vague dream. 
 
 Into this glad era a young man steps off a Twenty- 
 Third street horsecar. This young man, now an ambitious 
 designer, printer, editor and publisher, is yourself. 
 
 A ^ 
 
 T\t the age of five and twenty you are sporting the 
 encouraging beginnings of a mustache, still too thin to 
 permit of twirling at the tips. There is also the brave 
 suggestion of a Vandyke. These embellishments are 
 brown, as is also true of abundant and wavy hair of artistic 
 and poetic length. Your waistcoat is buttoned high, and 
 your soft, white collar is adorned with a five-inch-wide 
 black cravat tied in a flowing blowknot. Your short 
 jacket and tight-fitting pants quite possibly need pressing. 
 A black derby and well polished shoes complete your 
 distinguished appearance. Many scrubbings have failed 
 to remove all traces of printing ink from beneath and at 
 the base of your finger nails. 
 
 You are on your way to Scribner's. A few moments 
 later we find you seated in a leather-upholstered chair in 
 the editorial department of this famous publishing house. 
 You are waiting patiently and hopefully while an editor 
 
 C i 83 
 
is penning a note of introduction to Richard Harding 
 Davis, the popular writer of romantic fiction. 
 
 Now, the note safely bestowed in your breast pocket, 
 the envelope showing above a liberal display of silk hand- 
 kerchief and thus plainly in view of passing pedestrians 
 who would doubtless be filled with envy did they but 
 know its contents, you are crossing Madison Square Park 
 on your way to one of the Twenties, where Mr. Davis 
 has his lodging. You reach the house, walk up the steps 
 and rap. 
 
 "Is Mr. Davis at home? Why . . . why you are Mr. 
 Davis. I ... I didn't recognize you at first. Seeing you 
 portrayed in Mr. Gibson's illustrations to some of your 
 romances — " 
 
 "And now seeing me in this bathrobe you naturally 
 were a bit confused?" 
 
 "Yes, I was." 
 
 "I'm not at all surprised." 
 
 "Here, Mr. Davis, is a letter, I mean a note introducing 
 me to you. 
 
 "How about coming inside while I read the note?" 
 
 "That's . . . that's what I was hoping you'd say, Mr. 
 Davis." 
 
 A ^ 
 
 jT\nd now our favorite romantic author is seated with 
 one leg thrown over the corner of a table. "Of course. 
 Of course," he exclaims, cordially, "I know your posters 
 and your cover designs. And now you are starting a 
 magazine and you would like one of my stories for your 
 first number?" 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Davis. That is what I should like." 
 
 [19] 
 
"Of course I'll write a story for you. I shall be happy 
 to write a story; and I have one in mind that I think will 
 be just the kind you will like for your new magazine." 
 
 "Well, Mr. Davis, that's something that's just about as 
 wonderful as anything that could possibly happen to any- 
 body. Only . . . only — " 
 
 "Only you are not really started and your magazine 
 hasn't begun to earn an income, and so you are wonder- 
 ing— 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Davis—" 
 
 "Well, lad," and now Mr. Davis has his arm about 
 your shoulders. "Well, lad, just go home to your Way- 
 side Press print-shop in Springfield and don't do any 
 worrying about payment. Sometime when you are rich 
 and feel like sending me something, why any amount you 
 happen to send will be quite all right with me — and good 
 luck go with you." 
 
 (At this point it should be stated that when a small 
 check goes to Mr. Davis, with an apology for it being 
 just the first instalment and that another check will go 
 a month later, the return mail brings a pleasant letter of 
 thanks and an acknowledgment of payment in full.) 
 
 And now, as you are recrossing Madison Square Park, 
 your head so high in the clouds that not even the tips of 
 your toes are touching the earth, all the birds in the neigh- 
 borhood, including the sparrows, have gathered and are 
 singing glad anthems of joy; and all the trees that an hour 
 ago were just in green leaf are now billowed with beauti- 
 ful flowers. 
 
 Well, that is that, and of course you are now sitting 
 pretty. But presently we see you on a Fifth Avenus bus, 
 returning from Fifty-Ninth street where, in a sumptuous 
 
 [20} 
 
Victorian apartment overlooking Central Park you have 
 asked William Dean Howells for a story — and on this 
 incident we will charitably draw the curtain. 
 
 Next on our agenda we find you with Mr. Alden, edi- 
 tor of Harper's Monthly, You are enjoying luncheon at 
 the old Astor House. Mr. Alden is bestowing kindly en- 
 couragement that is accepted with avidity and advice 
 that is too often forgotten. But, avoiding moralizing, 
 we will now look in on you seated at a desk in a New 
 York office building. Beside you at the desk is Mr. Robert 
 Nelson, president of A. T. F. This is a most important 
 moment. Your magic name is about to be printed on type 
 labels and in trade advertising — and just yonder, at the 
 cashier's desk, back of a separating grill, a check is being 
 written which Mr. Nelson will soon sign. 
 
 N ^ 
 
 1 >l early seventy-five years have passed since that day 
 at the little brown schoolhouse in Lynn, more than 
 seventy since you first saw that little girl with the cute 
 pigtails— now seated nearby. Nearly seventy have slipped 
 by since that first failure in arithmetic led to your be- 
 coming a printer's devil. It is more than fifty-five years 
 since sparrows sang for you in blossoming Madison 
 Square, since the A. T. F. and nine other foundries copied 
 a panel of your lettering and called the product type. 
 Your merry meanderings have known many a stumble — 
 but when you fell down you always somehow managed 
 to get up — a bit bruised, maybe, but not limping. 
 
 Yes, the world went very well then. 
 
 A pleasant thought on which to fade out. 
 [2 1] 
 
Printed by Grant Dahlstrom 
 
 The Castle Press, Pasadena, California 
 
 for Fellow Typophiles, 
 
 Friends of the Press 
 
 and the Author. 
 
 300 copies printed on Maidstone and Fabriano Cover 
 courtesy of Stevens-Nelson Paper Corporation 
 
 Collotype portrait courtesy of 
 Meriden Gravure Company 
 
 March 1949 
 
Something about the Years that Followed, 
 
 A Supplement to 
 
 "Memories" 
 
 A record of The Wayside Press and Bradley -His Book, in- 
 cluding a list of publications , writings, cover designs, posters, 
 and items of printing produced by Will Bradley, 1895-igoo, 
 awaits his compiling and thus cannot be told at this time. 
 
 I9OO-I9OI 
 
 Designed format and typography for a Ladies 1 Home 
 Journal editorial prospectus to be printed at Journal 
 plant in Philadelphia. Used Oxford in a fifty pound trial 
 font cast for him by Mr. Phinney at Dickinson Foundry, 
 Boston. The face was designed and the original matrices 
 were cut by Archibald Binny, of Binny & Ronaldson, Phil- 
 adelphia, in 1796. B. & R. became MacKellar, Smiths & 
 Jordan, who in turn merged with ATF in 1892. A speci- 
 men sheet of the five sizes was issued later and the face was 
 offered for special-order casting. 
 
 Mr. Bok, the editor, visiting him in Cambridge and inter- 
 ested in his house decorations, commissioned the designing 
 of a series of interiors. These, with many suggestions for 
 furnishings, ran as full pages for eight months in Ladies' 
 Home Journal. Later reproduced in color, full size of 
 originals, and published as portfolio in Germany. Followed 
 by house designs that ran for another six months. 
 
 1902-1903 
 
 While recuperating from illness, built with own hands 
 a seven room cottage in White Mountains. Follow- 
 ing year built fourteen room house in Concord, Mass., using 
 old style mortise-and-tenon construction, with timbers and 
 
joists framed by himself and cut by carpenter on ground. 
 Old fashioned house raising. Land purchased from Mrs. 
 Daniel Lothrop, the Margaret Sidney of Five Little Pep- 
 pers. Located in vineyard of Ephriam Bull, creator of 
 Concord grape, and adjoining Nathaniel Hawthorne's 
 Wayside and two doors from Orchard House, home of 
 Louisa Alcott, author of Little Women. 
 
 Castle Perilous was written at this time. Later, with his 
 illustrations, it ran as a three-part serial in Colliers. 
 
 I9O4-I906 
 
 Designed covers and posters. Wrote Shards of the Silver 
 Sword, praised by Robert Underwood Johnson but 
 considered too archaic for publication in Century. Never 
 submitted elsewhere. Asked by Mr. Robert W. Nelson to 
 undertake an extensive advertising campaign for American 
 Type Founders Company. Promised as many large Miehle 
 presses as might be required. Promise was faithfully kept 
 and two or three big mailings of specimen showings and a 
 little magazine, American Chap-Book went out each month. 
 Designed three type faces and much decorative material. 
 
 The child's story, Peter Poodle, Toymaker to the King, 
 published as a book by Dodd, Mead, was written and il- 
 lustrated at this time. His own specially designed type was 
 used for setting the text. 
 
 19 o 7-1909 
 
 Mr. Robert Collier, of P. F. Collier & Son, commis- 
 sioned a typographic makeup for Colliers. Before this 
 was complete he, wb, took over Art Editorship. During 
 this period color was introduced in a monthly issue called 
 Household number. 
 
 I9IO-I9I4 
 
 Occupied a studio on 45th floor Metropolitan Tower. 
 Handled art editorship, all at practically the same 
 time, of five magazines: Good Housekeeping, just acquired 
 by Mr. Hearst, Metropolitan, Success, Pearson, National 
 Post, a news weekly for which he created a special new 
 format, in size the same as present news weeklies. Later 
 
Century was added. For all of these magazines he took care 
 of makeup. Also laid out one national advertising campaign, 
 and went to Boston once a week to revise the typographic 
 makeup of Christian Science Monitor— a beautiful and me- 
 morable experience and one of the rare occasions when an 
 outsider had been asked to help. A series of stories, Tales of 
 Noodleburg, started in 1906, was now finished. They ap- 
 peared monthly for a year in St. Nicholas and were pub- 
 lished by the Century Company as a book titled Wonder- 
 box Stories. 
 
 191S-1917 
 
 Motion pictures had graduated from two reels into fea- 
 tures. Mr. Hearst was making the serials, F atria and 
 Beatrice Fairfax—hiving earlier, with Pathe, produced the 
 successful Exploits of Elaine and Perils of Pauline. He 
 suggested that wb assume Art Supervision. The pictures 
 were being made at the Wharton studio in Ithaca. Irene 
 Castle was the star of Patria. Warner Oland and Milton 
 Sills were in the support. This proved to be a full-time job. 
 
 1918-1920 
 
 Wrote and directed pictures as an independent venture. 
 Produced Moongold, a Pierrot pantomime. It was 
 shot against black velvet, with properties but without sets. 
 As a novelty, with special advertising, it was shown at the 
 Criterion, in Times Square. 
 
 I9H-I93O 
 
 Returned to Mr. Hearst and devoted all of his time to 
 art supervision of magazines and planning the typo- 
 graphic and pictorial publicity for motion pictures. His use 
 of Caslon in a "free and lively" mixture of roman, italic, 
 caps, small caps and lower case in large and small sizes, in 
 the headings for Cosmopolitan, struck a new note in type 
 display and attracted wide attention. These were the first 
 of the large and distinctive headings that have now become 
 universal. Color was at this time introduced into every 
 opening of the text portion of Hearst's International. It 
 was a pioneer undertaking at a time when old-line illustra- 
 
tors lacked the training, and publishers lacked the color 
 presses, enjoyed today. During this period he arranged and 
 supervised the typographic layout of the first issue of the 
 Mirror. Commissions were taken to artists in Paris and 
 London, and his Spoils, a drama in free verse, was published 
 in Hears? s International. Before his retirement in 1930 he 
 made typographic layouts for the Delineator and the maga- 
 zine sections of the Herald-Tribune— not the current publi- 
 cation known as This Week— 2nd his novel, Launcelot and 
 the Ladies was written. It was published by Harpers. 
 
 Sixteen or more years ago his portrait appeared in the 
 Saturday Evening Post above the caption, Dean of 
 American Designers. In Publishers'' Weekly and other pub- 
 lications he has been named, Dean of American Art Editors. 
 At a luncheon honoring his eightieth birthday a testimonial 
 signed by members of the Typophiles, with the name of 
 Bruce Rogers heading the list, he was designated Dean of 
 American Typographers. 
 
 Since 1941 Mr. and Mrs. Bradley have been residents of 
 Southern California. 
 
 Tbe Castle Press 
 
 is Pleased to have been Permitted to Present to The 
 TYPOPHILES and Friends of the Press the 
 First telling of "Memories, 1875-1895," also this 
 Amplification of the Table 0/* Dates previously 
 recorded in the Soth Birthday Luncheon Souvenir. 
 
 Grant Dahlstrom, 
 
 Pasadena, California. 
 
 April, 1949- 
 
w 
 
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