What better training could a journalist ask for than this?  Page was only twenty-eight when these five years came to an end; but his life had been a comprehensive education in human contact, in the course of which he had picked up many things that were not included in the routine of Johns Hopkins University.  From Athens to St. Joe, from the comedies of Aristophanes to the stockyards and political conventions of Kansas City—­the transition may possibly have been an abrupt one, but it is not likely that Page so regarded it.  For books and the personal relation both appealed to him, in almost equal proportions, as essentials to the fully rounded man.  Merely from the standpoint of geography, Page’s achievement had been an important one; how many Americans, at the age of twenty-eight, have such an extensive mileage to their credit?  Page had spent his childhood—­and his childhood only—­in North Carolina; he had passed his youth in Virginia and Maryland; before he was twenty-three he had lived several months in Germany, and, on his return voyage, he had sailed by the white cliffs of England, and, from the deck of his steamer, had caught glimpses of that Isle of Wight which then held his youthful favourite Tennyson.  He had added to these experiences a winter in Kentucky and a sojourn of nearly two years in Missouri.  His Southern trip, to which Page refers in the above, had taken him through Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana; he had visited the West again in 1882, spending a considerable time in all the large cities, Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Leadville, Salt Lake, and from the latter point he had travelled extensively through Mormondom.  The several months spent in Atlanta had given the young correspondent a glimpse into the new South, for this energetic city embodied a Southern spirit that was several decades removed from the Civil War.  After this came nearly two years in New York and Washington, where Page gained his first insight into Federal politics; in particular, as a correspondent attached to the Tariff Commission—­an assignment that again started him on his travels to industrial centres—­he came into contact, for the first time, with the mechanism of framing the great American tariff.  And during this period Page was not only forming a first-hand acquaintance with the passing scene, but also with important actors in it.  The mere fact that, on the St. Joseph Gazette, he succeeded Eugene Field—­“a good fellow named Page is going to take my desk,” said the careless poet, “I hope he will succeed to my debts too”—­always remained a pleasant memory.  He entered zealously into the life of this active community; his love of talk and disputation, his interest in politics, his hearty laugh, his vigorous handclasp, his animation of body and of spirit, and his sunny outlook on men and events—­these are the traits that his old friends in this town, some of whom still survive, associate with the juvenile editor.  In his Southern