Shade of Columbus, how I wish I were home again!
Cheer up, boy, the hand-grasps of your dear New York friends will be sweet after the frantic grasping of stair-rails and other ship furniture for so many days.
Excuse me if I leave you for a few minutes. The interviewers are waiting for me downstairs in Major Pond's office. The interviewers! a gay note at last. The hall porter hands me their cards. They are all there: representatives of the _Tribune_, the _Times_, the _Sun_, the _Herald_, the _World_, the _Star_.
What nonsense Europeans have written on the subject of interviewing in America, to be sure! To hear them speak, you would believe that it is the greatest nuisance in the world.
A Frenchman writes in the _Figaro_: "I will go to America if my life can be insured against that terrific nuisance, interviewing."
An Englishman writes to an English paper, on returning from America: "When the reporters called on me, I invariably refused to see them."
Trash! Cant! Hypocrisy! With the exception of a king, or the prime minister of one of the great powers, a man is only too glad to be interviewed. Don't talk to me about the nuisance, tell the truth, it is always such a treat to hear it. I consider that interviewing is a compliment, a great compliment paid to the interviewed. In asking a man to give you his views, so as to enlighten the public on such and such a subject, you acknowledge that he is an important man, which is flattering to him; or you take him for one, which is more flattering still.
I maintain that American interviewers are extremely courteous and obliging, and, as a rule, very faithful reporters of what you say to them.
Let me say that I have a lurking doubt in my mind whether those who have so much to say against interviewing in America have ever been asked to be interviewed at all, or have even ever run such a danger.
I object to interviewing as a sign of decadence in modern journalism; but I do not object to being interviewed, I like it; and, to prove it, I will go down at once, and be interviewed.
The interview with the New York reporters passed off very well. I went through the operation like a man.
After lunch, I went to see Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, who had shown me a great deal of kindness during my first visit to America. I found in him a friend ready to welcome me.