Newspaper men are perhaps the only creatures who as a type never learn how
to ask questions. An embarrassment caused by the stupidity of the gabby
great whom they interrogate daily puts a crimp into their tongues. Their
questions wince in anticipation of the banalities they are doomed to
elicit. Their curiosity collapses under the shadow of the inevitable,
impending bromide.

Thus the newspaper man, wearily certain that regardless of what he asks or
how he asks it, he will hear for answers only the clumsy asininities
behind which the personalities, leaders and sacred white cows pompously
attitudinize, gets so that he mumbles a bit incoherently.

But here was a different case. Here were merry travelers with memories of
wind-swept valleys and star-capped mountains to chatter on. So the
newspaper man unearthed his vocabulary, tilted his hat a trifle and smiled
invitingly.

"Well," said he to the spokesman of the wanderers, "The kind of story I'd
like to get would be a story about five people wandering across the
country. You know. Hills, sunsets, trees and how those things drive away
the monotony that fills up the hearts of city folk. What you enjoyed on
the trip and the advantages of a rover over a swivel-chair statistician."

An eloquence was beginning to skip around on the newspaper man's tongue.
His heart, weary of tall buildings and the endless grimace of city
windows, began to warm under the visions his phrases aroused.

Then he paused. One of the women had interrupted. "Go on Martin, you can
tell him all that. And don't forget about the lovely hotel breakfast room
in Des Moines."