News is stranger than fiction not in what it tells but in how it happens. In a room twenty feet square, lighted by one kerosene lamp, we wrote our copy on our knees, against the wall, on each other’s backs, standing up and lying down, matching notes and exchanging information as we went along. “What’s the name of this town?” “Louisville.” “Kentucky?” “Kentucky, no. Hear him!--Ohio.” “Didn’t know there was a Louisville, Ohio.” “Write it anyway. It isn’t the first time you’ve written what you don’t know.” Then silence, save for the clicking of the telegraph instruments and the cracking of copy paper. “Who was the man in the red saddle?” No answer. Again: “Who was the guy in the red saddle?” No answer. Another voice, in the same difficulty, roaring: “Who in hell was the man in the red saddle?” Now everybody for a minute stops writing. Nobody knows. Voice: “Call him Smith: the man of mystery: the great unknown.” We did. The man in the red saddle was Smith the Great Unknown to the end of his silly part. There was a small hotel in the place, with only two bedrooms available, and these had been selfishly seized by three magazine writers who had no telegraph stuff to file. They had retired. The rest of us took possession of a fairly large lounging room and settled ourselves for the night on cots, pallets and chairs. The lean-minded man from Cleveland, reclining on the hotel desk with his feet on the cigar case, started an untimely discussion. “We’ve sent off a lot of guff about this thing,” he said, “and not a word of what it means. Not a man here has tried to tell what it means.” “Leave that to the editorial writers and go to sleep,” said St. Louis from under his hat. He had made his bed in the swivel chair. “It means something ... it means something,” said Cleveland. “Well, what?” asked a petulant voice. “It’s a joke,” said St. Louis, not moving. “People have to laugh,” he added. “Go to sleep or be still.” Another voice: “What does it mean, you Cleveland? I saw you reading Plutarch. What does it mean?” “These people are asking questions to which there is no answer,” said the Cleveland man, lifting on his elbow. “Why is anybody hungry in a land of surplus food? Why are able bodied men out of work while we have such roads as the one we traveled to-day? I don’t know. I’m asking.” A man whom we had hardly noticed before, anæmic, shrill and hairy, sat up on his mattress and thrust a naked bent arm out of his blanket.