While I was on the Globe-Democrat there was a sort of race-track , gambler, amateur detective and political and police hanger-on generally, who was a of news not only to our police and political men but to the sporting and other editors, a sort of Jack-of-all-news or tipster. To me he was both ridiculous and disgusting, loud, bold, , the kind of creature that begins as bootblack or newsboy and winds up as the president of a association or ball team. He claimed to be Irish, having a face, red hair, gray eyes, and rather large hands and feet. In reality he was one of those South Russian Jews who looked so much like the Irish as to be frequently mistaken for them. He had the wit to see that it would be of more advantage to him to be thought Irish than Jewish, and so had changed his name of Shapirowitz to Galvin—“Red” Galvin. One of the most offensive things about him was that his clothes were loud, just such clothes as and gamblers affect, hard, bright-checked suits, bright yellow shoes, ties of the most radiant , hats of a clashing , and rings and pins and cuff-links with diamonds or rubies—the kind of man who is convinced that clothes and a little money make the man, as they quite do in such instances.  
Galvin had the social and moral point of view of both the and the buzzard. According to Wood, who early made friends with him quite as he did with the Chinese and others for purposes of study, he was identified with some houses of prostitution in which he had a small financial interest, as well as various political schemes then being locally fostered by one and another group of low politicians who were constantly getting up one scheme and another to mulct the city in some underhanded way. He was a species of political and social , having all the high ideals of a bagnio detective: he began to interest Mr. Tobias Mitchell, who was a creature of an if slightly higher type, and the pair became reasonably good friends. Mitchell used him as an assistant to Hazard, Bellairs, Bennett, Hartung and myself: he supplied the paper with stories which we would rewrite. I used to laugh at him, more or less to his face, as being a freak, which of course generated only the kindliest of feelings between us. He always suggested to me the type of detective or plain-clothes man who would take money from street-girls, on them, as indeed I suspected him of doing.
 
I wondered how he could make anything out of this newspaper connection since, as Hartung and others told me, he could not write. It was necessary to rewrite his stuff almost . But his great recommendation to Mitchell and others was that he could get news of things where other reporters could not, among the police, detectives and politicians, with whom he was evidently hand-in-hand. By reason of his underworld connections many amazing details as to one form and another of political and social jobbery came to light, which doubtless made him to a city editor.
 
When some of his stories were given to me to rewrite we were thrown into and clashing contact. Because of his leers and , when he knew he could not write two good sentences in order, I frequently wanted to brain him but took it out in smiles and dry comments. His favorite expressions were “See?” and “I sez tuh him” or “He sez tuh me,” always accompanied by a contemptuous wave of a hand or a chin. One of the chief reasons why I hated him was that Dick Wood told me he had once remarked that newspaper work was a beggar’s game at best and that writers grew on trees, meaning that they were so numerous as to be negligible and not worth considering.
 
I made the best of these trying situations when I had to do over a story of his, extracting all the information I could and then writing it out, which resulted in some of his stories receiving excellent space in the day’s news and made him all the more and sure of himself. And at the same time these made him of more value to the paper. However, in due time I left the Globe-Democrat, and one day, greatly to my and , he appeared at the North Seventh Street station as a full-fledged reporter, having been given a regular position by Mitchell and set to doing police work—out of which task at the Four Courts, if I remember rightly, he finally Jock Bellairs, who was given to too much drinking.
 
To my surprise and I noticed at once that he was, as if by reason of past of which I had not the slightest idea, far more en with the and the captain than I had ever dreamed of being. It was “Charlie” here and “Cap” there. But what me most was that he gave himself all the airs of a newspaper man, swaggering about and talking of this, that and the other story he had written (I having done some of them myself!). The crowning blow was that he was soon closeted with the captain in his room, strolling in and out of that sanctum as if it were his private and giving me the impression of being in touch with realms and deeds of which I was never to have the slightest knowledge. This made me lest in these intimacies tales and mysteries should be unfolded that would have their first light in the pages of the Globe-Democrat and so leave me to be laughed at as one who could not get the news. I watched the Globe-Democrat more closely than ever before for evidence of such treachery on the part of the police as would r............