At any rate, this hard newspaper man had to begin with a comical equipment for his task: he would never learn to typewrite and he knew nothing of shorthand. Or rather, he was remarkably well equipped, as one of the outstanding traits of his character was the fearless zest with which, so to say, he took the hurdles of life, and a peculiar faculty in triumphing over such obstacles as his own limitations. He rapidly invented a curious system of abbreviations and marks to remind him of points, which served him as an interviewer as effectively as any knowledge of stenography could have done. He energetically entered upon his occupation as a feature writer with the customary themes of the “Sunday story.” He interviewed, figuratively speaking, the man who had discovered the missing link, and he got from the latest inventor of perpetual motion all the arresting details of his machine. And a lively part of the early Sunday morning ritual at his home was the advance calculating with a tape measure of the week’s income from space writing. It was later that he created his own highly successful type of literary interview. An intelligent perception of the business, a perception which is not general, perhaps is required fully to appreciate the fact that in this department of newspaper work he was an exceedingly skillful journalist. The secret of his really brilliant success in this field lay in large part in his instinct for luring the distinguished subject of his interview into provocative statements, enabling him to employ such heads as: “Is O. Henry a Pernicious Literary Influence?” “Godlessness Mars Most Contemporary Poetry,” “Americans Lack Loyalty To Their Writers,” “Shackled Magazine Editors Harm Literature,” “Declares Our Rich Authors Make Cheap Literature” and “Says American Literature Is Going To the Dogs.” At the time of the death of James Whitcomb Riley, Kilmer hurried to the Catskills for his interview with Bliss Carman. On his way back to the city, by way of his home at Mahwah, he dashed with his usual impetuosity in front of the moving train he was seeking to board, was knocked down and hurled or dragged a considerable distance, and taken to the Good Samaritan Hospital at Suffern, New York, with three ribs fractured and other injuries; where, wiring immediately to New York for his secretary, he dictated an interview as engaging and as full of journalistic craft as any he ever wrote. He seemed much more intent on his Sunday story, it is reported by H. Christopher Watts, who was acting as his secretary at that time, than on his predicament.