Page:Cartoons by Bradley.djvu/24

 quickly in favor of the greater period to come, when, following some years of cartoon work on other Chicago newspapers, he joined, in July, 1899, the staff of The Daily News.

HE man who came among us then cannot be forgotten. He was forty-six years old, and might very properly have been gray-haired and sedate. Instead he was one of the most dynamic, quick-spoken and athletic beings ever seen in a newspaper office. His hair was solid dark brown, brushed up in a defiant pompadour. His face was ruddy. He was six feet two inches tall, and his physique almost massive. His whole bearing, even in such a trivial action as striding down a room, was that of a tremendously intense and vigorous man.

Everybody knew, when Bradley came, that a new element had entered The Daily News office. What we did not know was that this serious-looking individual of whom most of us never had heard was to do in the seventeen years remaining to him work enough for the average life-time—work so startling in vitality, so luminous with youth, that one could never believe him to be old.

His first cartoon in The Daily News appeared July 5, 1899. Thereafter he furnished one daily, except when illness or vacation kept him away, or when some "big news cut" occupied his place on the front page. (It was part of his modesty and sense of the fitting that he never objected when his cartoon was crowded out.) During those first months he did his pictures at home, and went to the office only occasionally. Later he found he could work to better advantage in close touch with his associates; and when, in 1900, he was made director of the art department, regular office hours of course became still more imperative. He now went to work with the "rush hour" crowds, and returned home when they did. He was a daily toiler, with trains to catch, and not much time for lunch. On the whole, he rather liked it that way.

Although he had efficient help in the routine of the art department,