By a queer accident--a fortunate one for me--the owner of the St.
Joseph, Missouri, _Gazette_, answered the advertisement. Why he did it,
I never found out. He was in the same sort of desperate need of a
newspaper man as I was in desperate need of a job. I knew nothing about
him: he knew nothing about me. I knew nothing about newspaper work. I
had done nothing since I left the University but teach English in the
Louisville, Kentucky, High School for boys one winter and lecture at the
summer school at Chapel Hill one summer. I made up my mind to go into
journalism. But journalism didn't seem in any hurry to make up its mind
to admit me. Not only did all the papers in North Carolina decline my
requests for work, but such of them in Baltimore and Louisville as I
tried said 'No.' So I borrowed $50 and set out to St. Joe, Missouri,
where I didn't know a human being. I became a reporter. At first I
reported the price of cattle--went to the stockyards, etc. My salary
came near to paying my board and lodging, but it didn't quite do it. But
I had a good time in St. Joe for somewhat more than a year. There were
interesting people there. I came to know something about Western life.
Kansas was across the river. I often went there. I came to know Kansas
City, St. Louis--a good deal of the West. After a while I was made
editor of the paper. What a rousing political campaign or two we had!
Then--I had done that kind of a job as long as I cared to. Every
swashbuckling campaign is like every other one. Why do two? Besides, I
knew my trade. I had done everything on a daily paper from stockyard
reports to political editorials and heavy literary articles. In the
meantime I had written several magazine articles and done other such
jobs. I got leave of absence for a month or two. I wrote to several of
the principal papers in Chicago, New York, and Boston and told them that
I was going down South to make political and social studies and that I
was going to send them my letters. I hoped they'd publish them.

"That's all I could say. I could make no engagement; they didn't know
me. I didn't even ask for an engagement. I told them simply this: that
I'd write letters and send them; and I prayed heaven that they'd print
them and pay for them. Then off I went with my little money in my
pocket--about enough to get to New Orleans. I travelled and I wrote. I
went all over the South. I sent letters and letters and letters. All the
papers published all t