The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-11-05
A TRIBUTE BY WHITE.
Bent Murdock's Friendship Great
Help, the Emporia Editor Says.


William Allen White. editor of the
Enpofia Gazette, whose boyhood WIS
spent IN Ell Dorado, and who received
n .sI Sar newspaper training from
6ent' Murdoch. wrote this tribute:
ne nave known Mr.. Murdoch all my
NE cannot remember a time when
ne was not an important part of my
NE: 3! learned to read from the EN-
Rofia news and the Walnut Valley
lines wnen he was working on the
the Walnut Valley Times. AS a little
shaver. used to loaf about his print
ing ONCE and bother the men at work
ana ne was around then, young man
IN MS early thirties making hand in
the office. for he was first class
printer, and doing everything that is
implied in the phrase getting opt the
paper
II went to work on another paper
that had an Office next door when I
was boy Of II and as Mr.. Murdoch
nae the leading paper of the town
and we We're a poor contemporary,
we mad to borrow a good deal. so I
was sent to his Office to borrow every
thing in the shop. He was in his
early forties then and everyone
around the shop liked him. I never
knew man who had the friendship
OF his employees as he had. I remem-
per very well that when I was a devil
IN the other Office. Samuel J. Tilden
dled, when the boss was out of town
and L set up in type, without copy, a
Mr.. Tilden. 1t was a grand piece
and the pride of my life and re-
member that having been sent into
Mr.. Murdock's office to borrow some
type, ran into Mr. and Mrs. Muir
dock reading my grand piece in the
paper. Its grand eloquence must have
been very amusing for I remember
they were laughing at it and reading
the vain, pompous phrases in 1t with
great delight. I have never had the
courage to read the piece since, but it
taught me a lesson and that was that
Mr.. Murdock's style, simple. direct,
and above all understandable, is the
only kind of writing that really pays.
I wrote story for the Ell
Dorado Republican in August 1901,
called The Regeneration of Colonel
Hucks.' 1t attracted some attention,
being a political story, and was used
by the state central committee. I
have learned since that Mr.. Murdoch
was very much pleased with the piece
and very proud of it. I was anxious
to have him say something about it.
One day, he sidled up to the desk and
said, We'll, Mistofer, you think you
have done it, don't your Then he
grunted and added. old Plumb saws
you are right. He says your piece is
a daisy. Thinks it is like your father
HE looked at me minute over his
glasses as though he was trying to
think of a day long past, and then
said. 'Old@1Doc-White,' then re-
peated it, @Old-Doc-Whit and
turned on his heel and went to his
desk.
$50 we were always close friends
after that. He was a sort of foster
father to me. I never took any very
serious step that I did not talk to him
about it and our relations always were
very close and intimate and fine l
sat by his bed the other day and we
talked long while about old Doc
White as he called my father. and
we figured it out that my father knew
all about it. s1ls =
cit is now nearly forty years since
Mr.. Murdoch and my father came
down to the Walnut Valley They
were young men then. He has been
gone these twenty-seven years and Mr..
Murdoch had been on the sunset slope
for nearly decade and it is fine
evidence of his loyalty and manhood
that through all the years even to the
very last. he was able to recall with
clearness and with manifest affection,
the friend of his youth; to cherish and
Hook after that mans son as his own
and finally lie on the bed of pain and
look across the lifeline and chuckle
and sigh and sigh and chuckle, Old
Doc-White.' "