nished a life that had color and everlasting freshness.

Sometimes, trusting in the little gods of the improvident, I was lured
into the backwoods of the Ozarks by such a name as "Mountain Home,"
which caught my fancy on the map; and with no definite "stories" in mind
I would go sauntering from Nowhere-in-Particular in Northern Arkansas to
Someplace Else in Southern Missouri, snapping pictures by the roadside
and scribbling a few necessary notes. One of those excursions, which
cost $24.35, has brought a return, to date, of more than $250, which of
course does not include the worth of a five days' lark with a young
Irishman who went on the trip as a novel form of summer vacation.

He found all the novelty he could have hoped for. After some truly lyric
passages of life in Arkansas, when we felt positively homesick about
leaving one town to go on to another, we reached a railroad-less county
in Missouri infested with fleas; and to secure a discount on the stage
fare on the thirty-five-mile drive from Gainsville to West Plains (we
_had_ to have a discount to save enough to buy something to eat that
night) we played the harmonica for our driver's amusement until we
gasped like fish. His soul was touched either by the melody or by pity,
and he left us enough small change to provide a supper of cheese and
crackers.

Some happenings that must sound much more worth while in the ears of the
mundane have followed, but those first days of free lancing seem to me
to be among the choicest in a journalistic adventurer's experience.
Encounters with a variety of celebrities since then have proved no whit
more thrilling than the discovery that our host, Jerry South of Mountain
Home, was lieutenant-governor of Arkansas; and though I have roamed in
five nations, no food that I ever have tasted so nearly approaches that
of the gods as the strawberry shortcake we ate in Bergman.

Even in the crass matter of profits, I found the small town richer in
easily harvestable "stories" than the biggest city in the world. A few
years later I spent a week in London, but I picked up less there to
write about than I found in Sabetha, Kansas, in a single afternoon.
Sabetha furnished:

Half of the material for a motor car article. (When automobiles were
still a novelty to the rural population.) This sold to _Leslie's_.

An article on gasoline-propelled railway coaches, for _The Illustrated
World_.

A short contribution on scientific municipal manag