Clarke got about New York very little, but he knew the city from Arthur Kill to Pelham Bay; knew it just as a general at headquarters knows the terrain on which his troops are fighting, but which he himself has never seen. He had the map of New York in his brain. When an alarm of fire came in from an obscure corner, he knew what lumber-yards or oil-refineries were near the blaze, and whether that was a point where the water pressure was likely to fail. Clarke’s memory was uncanny; it seemed to have photographed every issue of the _Sun_ for years. It was a saying that while Clarke stayed the _Sun_ needed neither an index nor a “morgue”--that biographical cabinet in which newspapers keep records of men and affairs. Twenty-five years after the Beecher-Tilton trial a three-line death-notice came to Clarke’s desk. He read the dead man’s name and summoned a reporter. “This man was a juror in the Beecher case,” said Clarke. “Look in the file of February 6 or 7, 1875, and I think you’ll find that this man stood up and made an interruption. Write a little piece about it.” A _Sun_ man who reported the funeral of Russell Sage at Lawrence, Long Island, in July, 1906, returned to the office and told Mr. Clarke that an acquaintance of the Sage family had told him, on the train coming back, the contents of the old man’s will--a document for which the reading public eagerly waited. The reporter laid his informant’s card before the night city editor. Clarke studied the name on it for a minute, and then said: “We won’t print the story. Dig out the file for June, 1899, and somewhere on the front page--I think it will be in the third or fourth column--on the 1st or 2nd of June you’ll find a story telling that this man was sent to Sing Sing for forgery.” Clarke’s memory was right. Although it is anti-climactic to relate it, the ex-convict’s description of what the will contained was also correct. Will Irwin, while reporting a small war between two Chinese societies, wrote an article one night about the arrest of two Hip Sing tong men who were wearing chain armour under their blouses. Clarke, much interested, asked Irwin all about the armour. “It reminds me of ‘King Solomon’s Mines,’” remarked Irwin, “and the chain armour that the heroes had made in Sheffield to wear in Africa.” “Yes,” replied Clarke, who had not read the Haggard novel in fifteen years; “but it wasn’t Sheffield--it was Birmingham.” Clarke had a sense of responsibility that showed itself in nervousness. On a night when news was breaking, that nervousness was exhibited in his trips, every ten minutes, to the ice-water tank; in the constant lighting and relighting of his pipe; in the quick turn of his head at the approach of a reporter. Yet his nervousness was not contagious. So long as Clarke was nervous, the men under him felt that they need not be. He did all the worrying, and, unlike most worriers, got results from it.