Friendship

"Hello, Al."

Wearing a black silk hat, Al looked and promptly replied: "Hello, Paul." The speaker was Maj. Gen. Paul Bernard Malone. "How are you, Paul. I haven't seen you since 1903. Wasn't it in City Hall Park?" It was.

Paul had been honor man in Al's class at St. James Parochial School. "He got," recalled Al, "100 percent in everything except deportment and that doesn't count."

"Good Luck," said Paul.

"Come down," said Al, "to Washington after the fourth and I'll give you an easy job."

The Brown Derby in his silk hat was thus with some levity taking leave of a crowd which was as the sands for multitude. Finally he shook the hand of insistent Jimmy Ruggil, 10, and got into the private car, "St. Nicholas," attached to the 20th Century, Chicago-Albany.

The smiles of farewell were the first to cross his face in many an hour. George E. Brennan had died and was now buried. (See p. 12.)

The Brown Derby first met Boss Brennan in San Francisco in 1920. Both were experts in friendship; quickly and together they fashioned one, Al and George. A fortnight ago George lay dying. Al got daily bulletins. When George died, Al was almost the first to telephone the relict and her daughter. Busy, he bustled through the most pressing business, put aside his speech, got his friend, Contractor Kenny, to come up with the "St. Nicholas" for quick passage to Chicago. With them went a dozen other friends and his son, Arthur. At Englewood, a company of politicians boarded the train to converse with a strangely unenthusiastic Al. At the La Salle Street Station, massed battalions of Democracy seethed to glimpse an Al arrayed in black. Up Michigan Boulevard sped a strangely guarded Al--dozens of motorcycle police, five detectives, three machine guns. Columns of people lined the streets, blackened the windows--people who scarcely saw the Al who almost hid in the corner of his car

Arrived at George's modest apartment, Al went up in the old-fashioned elevator to greet Mrs. Brennan and her daughter Mary. What he said was inaudible. He went to an adjoining room to look upon George's face and the flowers which covered a bronze coffin. . . .

In the parish house of the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Democratic Candidate for Governor of Illinois came to see him about farmers.

Al was in the fourth row of pews. As the catafalque was laid before the altar, priests were chanting the De Profundis. Solemn Requiem Mass. Funeral sermon. "Death is not a parting, but a meeting." No eulogy. "Resurrectio sum et vita."

To the cemetery went George's body, while to the 20th Century went Al. Crowds . . . Paul ... a boy . . . and again, a smile.