Value of a Familiar Face

1901

An employee of the Chicago Tribune once found the fact that his face was familiar to the late Joseph Medill decidedly to his advantage. In the last years of his life Mr. Medill did not spend much time in Chicago and took no active part in the management of his paper, but when he was in the city he went to his office pretty regularly.

He knew all the old faces, but few of the new ones, and it was too late in life for him to accustom himself to them. He never knew to whom to give "copy" that he wished printed if the managing editor happened to be absent. On one occasion he handed some to a representative of another paper who chanced to be in the building. The man had been employed on The Tribune some years previously, so his face was familiar to Mr. Medill, while the faces of the men then actually in his employ were not.

One day he suddenly inquired what had become of the old night editor.

"He's in Boston," was the reply.

"Well, I want him," said Mr. Medill.

It was explained that the man had an excellent place in Boston and probably would not care to come back, but Mr. Medill persisted that he wanted him.

"I know him," he said, "and I want a familiar face in that room. I want some one who isn't a stranger to me. Telegraph him that Medill wants him."

So the man with "the old familiar face," although he was not an old man by any means, went back to The Tribune on his own terms. — Youth's Companion.