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The one thing I heard which seemed rather important at the time, beautiful, because of a man’s voice and gestures, was a speech by Bourke Cochran, exhorting the convention to nominate his candidate, David Bennett Hill, and save the party from defeat. Indeed his speech, until later I heard William Jennings Bryan, seemed to me the best I had ever heard, clear, sonorous, forcible, sensible. He had something to say and he said it with art and seeming conviction. He had presence too, a sort of Herculean, animal-like effrontery. He made his audience sit up and pay attention to him, when as a matter of fact it was interested in talking privately, one member to another. I tried to take notes of what he was saying until one of my associates told me that the full minutes of his speech could soon be secured from the shorthand reporters.

Being in this great hall cheek by jowl with the best of the Chicago newspaper world thrilled me. “Now,” I said to myself, “I am truly a newspaper man. If I can only get interesting things to write about, my fortune is made.” At once, as the different forceful reporters of the city were pointed out to me (George Ade, Finley Peter Dunne, “Charlie” Seymour, Charles d’Almy), my neck swelled as does a dog’s when a rival appears on the scene. Already, at mere sight of them, I was anxious to try conclusions with them on some important mission and so see which of us was the better man. Always, up to the early thirties, I was so human as to conceive almost a deadly opposition to any one who even looked as though he might be able to try conclusions with me in anything. At that time, I was ready for a row, believing, now that I had got thus far, that I was destined to become one of the greatest newspaper men that ever lived!