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

354

MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

evade publicity, shunning public appearances, avoiding
the mention of his name in print. And this was not because he resembled in any particular the shrinking violet,
but simply because he was too fastidiously proud of
himself to desire that sort of thing. It was characteristic
of him that when he died I could discover in existence but
two photographs of his features taken later than the
family portraits of early youth. One was the postagestamp sized picture required for an automobile license
used abroad, the other a face, caught in spite of himself
in'a flashlight group. The latter is reproduced here in
enlargement; it is a very good likeness of Laffan.
Once in 1908 he received in common with many others
a request from Charles F. Lummis of the Los Angeles
Public Library for his signature and a paragraph or page
of original sentiment to go into a sort of card index of
fame in that establishment. "To thousands in this community," wrote the worthy librarian, "your name is a
household word. Your name in your own hand would be
a personal favor and privilege to every one of these
strangers who count you among the preferred creditors of
their minds." The appeal was signed with a rubber stamp,
perhaps necessarily. Laffan called for his secretary and
dictated upon the fair big page of linen woven paper
furnished for the purpose this response: "With pleasure.W. M. Laffan,"-all in typewriting. If I ever get to Los
Angeles again I am going to see whether his cantankerous
contribution has a place in the "autograph archive."
George Barry Mallon, now of the Bankers Trust Company but long the city editor of The Sun, and with Selah
Merrill Clarke the best remembered of all the capable men
who held that important desk, daytime or night, has given

in a few strokes a lifelike sketch of Laffan's quiet vigilane
in the news department of the paper. "There was frequently," wrote Mallon, "a dash of delightful humor in
his morning talks at the city desk, and when he yielded