Arizona republican., 1905-06-04
By GeIett Burgess and Will Irwin.

You see, this ain't my regular job. I'm working here because my profess sion is played out in San Francisco. m a dermograph artist. Whats that ? Oh, it's what most people call a tattoo CT. But you don't think we've got as much right to be called artists as the fellows that slap paint on cloth with brush? It was the electric needle and the Jap tattooer who ran me out of business. With the electric needle a man could put on a design in about a quarter of the time that it takes to do a real artistic job by hand. The blam- ed little Jap would pretty near pay to get customer, he worked that cheap. l quit .and I never get out my needle now except for a design on someone in the baths.
 My parlOrs were on the water front, becanse most of my customers were sailors. Of course, once in a whiIe some swell from Mob Hill would come in for a design or two. I used to do nay best work for them, because. I thought, you never can tell when these society people will get next to the fact that a picture on the skin has it a mile on a painting. Why the other day l read in the papers that a Frenchman got a hundred thousand dollars for little, dinky canvas paint ing The highest pay I ever knew a dermograPh artist to get was five hun dred for doing a Wells Bros tattootd woman. Do you call that square?
 After the Jap and the electric needle chump came to town business fell off, as I was telling you. They'd have made me close up my shop and get out if it hadn't been for Spotty Crigg. Ever haa .f hi =. been in San Francisco long, In those days he kept a sailor boarding house and saloon around the corner from my parlors, and he was a sort of boss of the water front, good at any time to deliver 800 votes. I ain't saying that Spotty was a Sunday school man, but he stuck to his friends. I was one of the gang, so he sent me enough jobs to keep me a-gOing. Besides, I helped him, once or twice. in a shanghaiing deal. You see, like most sailor boarding. house keepers in those days he was a crimp-used to deliver a sailor or two when foremast hands were scarce and the pay was good. Spotty Crigg is dead now, or I wouldn't be telling about his last and biggest shanghaiing scrape. l didn't understand it at the time. but I learned about it afterward. part lroln CflSS, ana part rom people on the other side of the little deal.
 One of my society customers was young Tom Letterblair. Maybe you don't know about him, either. He be- lonSed to about the richest tribe of swells on Mob Hill. That fellow was as wild as a fishhawk-a thoroughbred dead game sport. His being wild didn't bother his people so much as the way he went about it-always do- ing something crazy His people were strong on getting into the society col umns of the papers, but he was eter- nally getting the family name on the news page of the yellow journals if not in the police reports. He wasn't really what you would call bad, either; only wild and careless, and brought up wrong, and stubborn about it when any one tried to call him down. He'd never seem sorry if he got the family into trouble, but just laugh at his sisters when they roasted him. And instead of treating him quiet and easy, and gentling him into being good. they'd jaw him. That's a bad scheme with a gilded youth like Tom LetterbIair.