“‘I’m just an innocent bystander. My name is John W. Kern. I am a lawyer up at Kokomo, and I bumped into this thing accidentally.’ Some of the small town reporters clustered about that baggage truck listening to Mr. Kern’s recital of the story of the young man’s arrest in later years became well known in journalistic work, and the friendship for Mr. Kern that began on the railway platform was never broken. Mr. Kern never changed that policy of dealing with newspaper men. The correspondents who campaigned with Mr. Kern were always sure of fair and equal treatment. He played no favorites. When he gave out a story every one got it. Knowing that a careless or indifferent reporter, or a representative of an unfriendly paper could cause him great annoyance, and perhaps deep injury by not truthfully quoting him, or twisting his language to a meaning other than what he intended to say, Mr. Kern never asked the correspondents with him to submit their dispatches before putting them on the wire. He was willing to trust to their fairness and honor.
“‘Gentlemen,’ he would say at the beginning of the tour, ‘I won’t say anything that I do not wish published, and I know you won’t send anything I don’t say.’ And among the hundreds of correspondents who ‘covered’ Mr. Kern in his long political career not one ever disappointed him. When John W. Kern was the principal figure in the noise and music of the feast the newspaper men with him were never forgotten. Reception committees might try to drag him away, but he would not be dragged.
“‘There will be no show,’ he used to tell the eager committeemen, each striving for the honor of leading him to his carriage or to the speaker’s stand, ‘until the orchestra is ready. I want the newspaper men put where they can see and hear.’ And he would not move until the correspondents with him were provided for. Once he was dragged to a boarding house by the reception committee, who thought it would be a good political stroke to have Mr. Kern take dinner with the boarding house keeper who was off the county ticket. The newspaper men returning from the telegraph office were met at the gate by Mr. Kern.
“‘Boys,’ he whispered, ‘don’t come in here. The grub is ghastly and the board of health has gone fishing. If you must eat in this town go to the hotel.’
“In his campaigns Mr. Kern always prepared a schedule of his own itinerary, and used to fret a great deal if trains were late or wheeled transportation was not promptly on hand. He was always called in the morning at least an hour before train time, and part of his regular work before breakfast was to see that the baggage of the correspondents was ready to be taken to the station—he would not trust anybody but himself to look after the baggage, and he was always impatient until breakfast was served. At one hotel the waiter was slow because the waiter and cook were one and the same. Mr. Kern’s watch was propped against a glass of water on the table. He became nervous and restless and finally shouted to the landlord, who was sweeping out the office:
“‘Pete, I’ve only got fifteen minutes to make that train—can’t you hurry breakfast a little?’
“‘Don’t worry, John,’ came back through the dust clouds in the office. ‘You can eat all there is in the house and still have plenty of time for your train.’
“This put Mr. Kern in a good humor, and he made his railroad connection all right.
“On another occasion the party with Mr. Kern had to cross a small river on an old-fashioned ferry. In midstream the rope broke and the craft began floating on the current. Mr. Kern struck up ‘Life on the Ocean Wave’ and the correspondents joined in with him. It was the first time correspondents knew Senator Kern was a singer, and for that matter none of them ever heard him attempt to sing again. Kin Hubbard, who was in the party, drew a cartoon of the float down the river for The Indianapolis News, which pleased Mr. Kern greatly and he always declared that the cartoon was Hubbard’s masterpiece.
“He had a most wonderful memory for names, faces and incidents, and his speeches were generally punctuated with entertaining stories, a greater part of which he usually located in the vicinity of Kokomo. There was always a story to properly illustrate a point, and if the anecdote related by John W. Kern could be compiled in one volume it would make a book as huge as Webster’s Unabridged. And these stories were not of a kind that offended or hurt, and the occasion for their use was always appropriate. He had a way, too, of rebuilding a speech with new words, and sometimes the correspondents who were with him perhaps for weeks and had heard him speak many times would burden the wires with a warmed-over speech, to the distraction of the managing editors and the delight of the copy editors, whose mission is to knock and destroy.