standards at which it aimed it imitated the London _Spectator_. Perhaps
Page obtained a thousand dollars' worth of fun out of his investment; if
so, that represented his entire profit. He now learned a lesson which
was emphasized in his after career as editor and publisher, and that was
that the Southern States provided a poor market for books or
periodicals. The net result of the proceeding was that, at the age of
twenty-three, he found himself out of a job and considerably in debt.

He has himself rapidly sketched his varied activities of the next five
years:

"After trying in vain," he writes, "to get work to do on any newspaper
in North Carolina, I advertised for a job in journalism--any sort of a
job. By a queer accident--a fortunate one for me--the owner of the St.
Joseph, Missouri, _Gazette_, answered the advertisement. Why he did it,
I never found out. He was in the same sort of desperate need of a
newspaper man as I was in desperate need of a job. I knew nothing about
him: he knew nothing about me. I knew nothing about newspaper work. I
had done nothing since I left the University but teach English in the
Louisville, Kentucky, High School for boys one winter and lecture at the
summer school at Chapel Hill one summer. I made up my mind to go into
journalism. But journalism didn't seem in any hurry to make up its mind
to admit me. Not only did all the papers in North Carolina decline my
requests for work, but such of them in Baltimore and Louisville as I
tried said 'No.' So I borrowed $50 and set out to St. Joe, Missouri,
where I didn't know a human being. I became a reporter. At first I
reported the price of cattle--went to the stockyards, etc. My salary
came near to paying my board and lodging, but it didn't quite do it. But
I had a good time in St. Joe for somewhat more than a year. There were
interesting people there. I came to know something about Western life.