and rewrite on another sheet of paper the word "solidity." I have seen this word in his characteristic script duplicated a hundred times in a single evening. Whence came this whimsical habit I know not. He had it when I first knew him; he persisted in it to the end. And somehow the word "solidity" as he wrote it a million times to no obvious purpose seems to me to bear in it a kind of symbol of his literary method. Solidity of thought, solidity of expression—this was his characteristic quality.
Upon many occasions I have heard remarks suggesting the idea of Mr. Scott as a severe man as if he were a hard taskmaster. Never was there a greater misconception. He was not indeed much given to the conventioned amenities. He would come or go often without a sign of recognition, but it was merely the mark of a mind absorbed. In all essential ways he was the most considerate of employers—I have sometimes thought too considerate for his own profit or for our best discipline. His assumption was that every man was, of course, doing his duty. There was never anything like critical observation of the occupations or the absences of his assistants. He never looked at the clock. In his attitude toward his assistants there was no direct oversight, no pettiness. And all who served him will bear me witness that in the crises of personal distress or domestic affliction he was the very soul of consideration. A man called from his work by any domestic emergency was never made to suffer in the thought that his absence from duty would discredit him or that it would be reflected in a diminished pay check. Nor was any man ever expected in respect of the course of the paper to write against his own convictions or in disloyalty to his own judgment. "Do you feel like writing so and so?" he would say. And if there was any indication of dissent from views which he evidently wished presented he would say: "Oh, well, I will do it myself. I don't want in this paper any perfunctory work. No man ever wrote anything that he didn't believe, that was worth anybody's reading." And so he would set himself to labors
