Page:Cartoons by Bradley.djvu/20

 aside the big oar, with other trophies of boyhood, and go into the office. This was a tremendous change from the freedom of life in Evanston, and the comparative freedom of the campus. This was being at the command of somebody eight or nine hours a day, and having intricate new tasks to learn. This was work. And, whether he liked it or not, Luther Bradley worked. It is possible he did not like the real estate business; perhaps visions of sailboats or even drawing lessons floated before him, but he put these things aside, in business hours, and crooked his tall young form over ledgers. At first he was conveyancer, and afterward, when he had proved his worth, cashier. Always from youth to maturity he did with all his might whatever lay before him. So he was a diligent conveyancer and a scrupulous cashier. From an outdoor boy he had turned into an "inside man."

A little later Wyllys W. Baird, eldest son of the senior partner, came into the office to "work up." The Baird and Bradley families knew each other well, of course, and Wyllys Baird, though younger than Luther, was more than a mere office acquaintance for him. Mr. Baird is one of those who testifies to the fidelity with which the future cartoonist did routine work. He learned then much of the clean-cut efficiency, the determination to finish what was begun, that he practiced later, and that he demanded from others. Nevertheless, whenever he could he went in for athletics, for hard physical tests. Wyllys Baird recalls vividly a day when Luther Bradley challenged him to walk from the north end of the La Salle Street tunnel to Evanston. They did it that afternoon by dinner time. Thirty years later the same Luther, again with a dauntless companion, rowed a boat from the mouth of the river to Wilmette without dropping oars. He enjoyed such feats at fifty as much as he did at twenty.

YLLYS BAIRD pushed on with the firm, and became at length its senior partner, as he now is. But Luther Bradley, after seven years, dropped out. His health had suffered somewhat from loyalty to those