hat I sent them and I was rolling in wealth! I had
money in my pocket for the first time in my life. Then I went back to
St. Joe and resigned; for the (old) New York _World_ had asked me to go
to the Atlanta Exposition as a correspondent. I went. I wrote and kept
writing. How kind Henry Grady was to me! But at last the Exposition
ended. I was out of a job. I applied to the _Constitution_. No, they
wouldn't have me. I never got a job in my life that I asked for! But all
my life better jobs have been given me than I dared ask for. Well--I was
at the end of my rope in Atlanta and I was trying to make a living in
any honest way I could when one day a telegram came from the New York
_World_ (it was the old _World_, which was one of the best of the
dailies in its literary quality) asking me to come to New York. I had
never seen a man on the paper--had never been in New York except for a
day when I landed there on a return voyage from a European trip that I
took during one vacation when I was in the University. Then I went to
New York straight and quickly. I had an interesting experience on the
old _World_, writing literary matter chiefly, an editorial now and then,
and I was frequently sent as a correspondent on interesting errands. I
travelled all over the country with the Tariff Commission. I spent one
winter in Washington as a sort of editorial correspondent while the
tariff bill was going through Congress. Then, one day, the _World_ was
sold to Mr. Pulitzer and all the staff resigned. The character of the
paper changed."

What better training could a journalist ask for than this? Page was only
twenty-eight when these five years came to an end; but his life had been
a comprehensive education in human contact, in the course of which he
had picked up many things that were not included in the routine of Johns
Hopkins University. From Athens to St. Joe, from the comedies of
Aristophanes to the stockyards and political conventions of Kansas
City--the transition may possibly have been an abrupt one, but it is not
likely that Page so regarded it. For books and the personal relation
both appealed to him, in almost equal proportions, as essentials to the
fully rounded man. Merely from the standpoint of geography, Page's
achievement had been an important one; how many Americans, at the age of
twenty-eight, have such an extensive mileage to their credit? Page had
spent his childhood--and his childhood only--in North Carolina; he had