Sublime

Journal,

North had worked for the arms-length, extra-judicial, extra-governmental agency known as the Board for four years. He was going to die young – the bullet guaranteed it. He told them he wanted to do something useful with the time he had left. And they took him at his word.

‘In his determination to find short cuts, he is apt to be slap-dash and erratic … though his approach shows some signs of originality, he is a very hard man to teach and will, I believe, be an even harder one to place …’

The “Q” was truly one of America’s best and most-profitable roads. Well capitalized, well constructed, and well managed by two of the giant figures of American railroading, John Murray Forbes and Charles Perkins, along with their New England associates, it served a densely populated and fertile agrarian hinterland stretching across Illinois and Iow

Bill Walsh (who I’ve described exclusively as my personal hero since first picking up a copy of his essential text The Elephants of Style: A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English

Administrative responsibility came naturally. He handled the staff adroitly and was always able to cajole crusty Cambridge printers into opening the forms and remaking a page for last-minute submissions by tardy college journalists. “In his geniality was a kind of frictionless command,” his co-editor, W. Russell Bowie, recalled.53