Being destined then to remain in Kansas City for four or five days more, I found myself with ample leisure in which to collect my thoughts and prepare for the journey through the "wild west" ahead.
One result of my leisure was that I paid a visit to the editor of the Kansas City Star. This is one of the most progressive newspapers in the United States, and circulates everywhere in the West. The extent of its circulation and the results of its progressiveness I was, however, still to learn.
The editor was found as usual at his desk in the middle of a large room, surrounded by his myrmidons in typical American style. He greeted me with extreme cordiality. "No need to tell you I'm English, I suppose?" I said.
"See that door over there?" (pointing to the one in the far distance through which I had entered). "Well, I spotted you were an Englishman the minute you came in there."
I explained with complete humiliation that I was travelling across the United States of America on a motor-cycle and wondered whether his readers would be interested in the point of view of such a despicable object as an English motor-cyclist on this great and wonderful country. "Not for the love of the thing, you know," I added, "I don't see why I shouldn't earn a dollar or two on the wayside."
He pointed to a typewriter standing idle at a desk. "Let's have the story right now, and give us something about roads. There's a big movement just started to get good roads, so you can just hand out the straight dope to everybody on the subject. Get me? Something good and snappy."
I explained that while no one was more eminently capable of writing about American roads than myself, I had never graduated as a typist in the course of my business career. I should, therefore, have to retire and push the modest pen.
"What! a business man who can't use a typewriter? I didn't know there was such a thing," was his rejoinder.
I let them have it about roads. I referred also to their commendable system of arresting road-hogs. This with a few pro-American embellishments such as "wonderful country," "indescribable beauty," "inexhaustible wealth," etc. etc., rounded off the theme.
My friend the editor not only rewarded me at the noble rate of a dime a line (5d.), thus assuring the hotel expenses for my stay in the city, but also gave me about an hour of his valuable time in talking about almost everything under the sun—mainly American. It is rather surprising to an Englishman to find that practically any worthy American business man, no matter how busy he may be or how valuable the time lost thereby, will entertain a visitor for an incredible length of time. If the visitor happens to be an Englishman, he is all the more pleased to do so because then he can talk uninterruptedly about America and what a wonderful country it is. All the noted men of Europe, I learned, had been in the office and sat in that same chair. The editor told me so. Lord Northcliffe spent all his leisure hours there while in the States. So also did many other notorieties, some unknown to me. Leastways, so the editor told me. I took his money and bade him farewell.