On the way to the Great Lakes there are several people I must stop and see, and show myself to.
I stop at Topeka and visit Dad Rother ... a columnist on a newspaper there, of more than local fame ... an obviously honest-to-God bachelor ... he is afflicted with dandruff and his hair is almost gone. He shows me photographs of Mackworth and of Uncle Bill Struthers, each autographed with accompanying homely sentiment.
I catch myself pretending an interest in Rother's column, but really actuated by a desire to plant myself in his mind, and to have a notice in his paper about me ... anything that Dad Rother has in his column is copied in all the Kansas papers.
I drop in at a Leavenworth newspaper office, ostensibly to borrow the use of a typewriter.
But the stick or so put in the paper about my passing through Leavenworth pleases me.
General Fred Furniss is stationed at Fort Leavenworth. I must visit him.
General Furniss walked in rapidly as if executing a military manœvour, both hands held forth in welcome. He was "Napoleonic" in size, and, also like Napoleon, he carried too much belly in front of him. He wore a closely curling salt-and-pepper beard....