I
had to shove him out of the way, at the last tick, when the hoofs were
loud. I often wondered if those ponies didn't look suddenly large and
imminent on the little glass rectangle into which he was peering. That
was the kind of person he was. He was glued to his work. He was a
curious man, because that nerve of fear, which is well developed in most
of us, was left out of his make-up. No credit to him. It merely wasn't
there. He was color-blind to danger. He had spent his life everywhere by
bits, so he had the languages. I used to admire that in him, the way he
could career along with a Frenchman, and exchange talk with a German
waiter: high speed, and a kind of racy quality.
I used to write the text around his pictures, captions underneath them,
and then words spilled out over the white paper between his six by tens.
We published in the country life magazines. They gave generous big
display pages. In those days people used to read what I wrote, because
they wanted to find out about the pictures, and the pictures were fine.
You must have seen Rossiter's work--caribou, beavers, Walter Travis
coming through with a stroke, and Holcombe Ward giving a twist delivery.
We had the field to ourselves for two or three years, before the other
fellows caught the idea, and broke our partnership. I turned to
literature, and he began drifting around the world for long shots.
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