Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

LATER YEARS ON THE FIRING LINE

353

Laffan's talents subtended an unusually spacious angle.
He was a promoter and organizer gifted with imagination
and intrepidity; a player of the moves of finance whom no
large figures frightened. His was as unlawyer-like a mind
as ever might be; yet I never knew a lawyer-Bartlett,
Beck, Stetson, Jerome, Ivins, Elihu Root, Taft or any
other-who did not hold his opinion in respect. He had a
contempt for the ways of politics, and yet politicians and
statesmen coveted his practical advice. The leading
characteristic of his intellect was a penetration that swiftly
reached the essentials of a situation, yet he was capable
of prejudices both blind and lame. He possessed the muriatic-acid wit that generally excludes the propensities of
more genial humor, but had just the same all the humor
one expects in a high-grade Irishman. He was impulsive
and phlegmatic; Celtic temperament that boiled at low
temperature, boiling behind a physiognomy betokening
a habit of control imperturbable as ice at zero. His hatreds
were so passionate that he could discern precious little
good in the fiercely hated; no woman could be more
tenderly considerate when affection existed. He was
adroit in his schemes of selfish interest; not less diligent
when he planned unselfishly for the interests of others.
His assurance was superb, but his dislike of assurance's
usual forms of public expression almost reached a ridiculous extreme of self-effacement. These are not everyday
combinations in the same individual. I am not trying to
build antitheses but merely to indicate some of the contradictory traits of a singular personality.
It is partly, I suppose, on account of these complexities
that Laffan's reputation in the profession does not measure
up to his real dimensions except in the memory of those

who really understood him. He was absolutely careless of
the celebrity which is a temptation to vainer but lesser
men. Instead of attempting to advertise himself or abetting such advertisement he would go out of his way to