If ever a youth was cast adrift and made to realize that he knew nothing at all about the thing he was so eager to do, that youth was I. “Cover the hotels for political news,” were my complete instructions, but what the devil was political news? What did they want me to do, say, write? At once I was thoroughly terrified by this opportunity which I had so eagerly sought, for now that I had it I did not know how to make anything clear. For the first day or two or three therefore I wandered like a lost soul about the corridors and parlor floors and “committee rooms” of these hotels which I was supposed to cover, trying to find out where the committee rooms were, who and what were the men in them, what they were trying to do. No one seemed to want to tell me anything, and, as dull as it may seem, I really could not guess. I had no clear idea of what was meant by the word “politics” as locally used. Various country congressmen and politicians brushed past me in a most secretive manner; when I hailed them with the information that I was from the _Globe_ they waved me off with: “I am only a delegate; you can’t get anything out of me. See the chairman.” Well, what was a chairman? I didn’t know. I did not even know that there had been lists published in all the papers, my own included, giving the information which I was so anxiously seeking! I had no real understanding of politics or party doings or organization. I doubt if I knew how men came to be nominated, let alone elected. I did not know who were the various State leaders, who the prospective candidates, why one candidate might be preferred to another. The machinations of such an institution as Tammany Hall, or the things called property interests, were as yet beyond me. My mind was too much concerned with the poetry of life to busy itself with such minor things as politics. However, I did know that there was a bitter feud on between David Bennett Hill, governor of New York, and Grover Cleveland, ex-President of the United States, both candidates for nomination on the Democratic ticket, and that the Tammany organization of New York City was for Hill and bitterly opposed to Cleveland. I also knew that the South was for any good Southerner as opposed to Cleveland or Hill, and that a new element in the party was for Richard Bland, better known as “Silver Dick,” of Missouri. I also knew by reputation many of the men who had been in the first Cleveland administration.