This visit provided a mere glance, however. When I returned the key I was given no encouragement. A little later, my ability to write having been fairly established, I was given a rather large order for one so new: a double-page spread, with illustrations, for the Sunday issue, relating to the new depot then under construction. I was told to see that the art department supplied several drawings—one in particular of a proposed iron and glass train-shed which was to cover thirty-two tracks. Also one of a clock-tower two hundred and thirty-two feet high. This assignment seemed a very honorable one, since it was to carry drawings, and I went about it with energy and enthusiasm. It was Mitchell who told me to look to the art department for suitable illustrations.
Evidently the art department knew all about it before my arrival, for upon inquiry I found that P. B. McCord, he of the tramp-like hair and whiskers, was scheduled to make the pictures. His manner pleased me. He was so cordial, so helpful. Together we visited the depot, and a few days later he called upon me in the reportorial room to ask me to come and see what he had done. Having in regard to most things the same point of view, we were soon the best of friends. A more or less affectionate relationship was then and there established, which endured until his death sixteen years later. During all of that period we were scarcely out of touch with each other, and through him I was destined to achieve some of my sanest conceptions of life. (See _Peter_. Twelve Men.)
And the amazing Wood! I have never encountered another like him, possibly because for years I have not been associated with young people, who are frequently full of eccentricities. A more romantic ass than Wood never lived, nor one with better sense in many ways. In regard to newspaper drawing he was only a fairly respectable craftsman, if so much, but in other ways he was fascinating enough. He and McCord were compelled at that time to use the old chalk plate process for much of their hurried work, a thing which required the artist to scratch with a steel upon a chalk-covered surface, blowing the chalk away from his outlines as he made them. This created a dust which both McCord and Wood complained of as being disagreeable and “hard on the lungs.” Wood, who pretended to be dying of consumption, and did die of it sixteen years later within a month of his friend McCord, made an awful row about it, although he could easily have done much to mend matters by taking a little exercise and keeping out of doors as much as possible; but he preferred to hover over a radiator or before a fire. Always, on every occasion, he was given to playing the rôle of the martyr.