er's_. It required tremendous
energy to keep up such a pace, but there was sweet comfort in the
thought that, technically at least, I was now my own boss. Gradually, I
broke away from assignment work until I was free to write what I liked
and to go where I pleased.

From finding material in the city, I adventured into some of the near-by
towns in Missouri and Kansas, and soon was arguing a theory that in
every small town the local correspondents of big city newspapers are
constantly overlooking pay streaks of good "feature stories." Usually I
would start out with twenty-five dollars and keep moving until I went
broke. A railway journey no longer meant, as in reportorial days, a
banquet in the dining-car and a chair on the observation platform,
charged up on an expense account. Often enough I slept in a day coach,
my head pillowed on a kodak wrapped in a sweater vest. The elevation was
just right for a pillow; and at the same time the traveler was insured
against theft of his most precious possession, a brand new folding
camera of post card size.

For the little snapshot box soon showed its weakness in an emergency and
had to be replaced with a better machine which had an adjustable
diaphragm, a timing apparatus, a focusing scale and a front like an
accordion. One afternoon it had happened that while two hundred miles
from a city and twenty from the nearest railroad, the snapshot box had
been useless baggage for two hours, while an anxious free lance sat
perched on the crest of an Ozark mountain studying an overcast sky and
praying for some sunlight. At last the sun blazed out for half a minute
and the lever clicked in exultation.

This experience enforced a lesson: "Learn to take any sort of picture,
indoors or out, on land or water, in any sort of weather." After I got
the new machine, with a tripod to insure stability and consequent
sharpness of outline, a piece of lemon-colored glass for cloud
photography and another extra lens for portrait work, I began snapping
at anything that held out even the faintest promise of allowing me to
clear expenses in the course of acquiring needed experience. I
photographed the neighbors' children, houses offered for sale, downtown
street scenes and any number of x-marks-the-spot-of-the-accident.

When a cyclone cut a swath through one of our suburbs, I rushed
half-a-dozen photographs to _Leslie's_, feeling again some of the same
thrilling sort of confidence that had accompanied t