Whether I should go East or West suddenly became a question with me. I had the feeling that I might do better in Detroit or some point west of Chicago, only the nearness of such cities as Cleveland, , Pittsburgh and those farther east me; the cost of reaching them was small, and all the while I should be moving toward my brother in New York. And so, after making at the office of the Bee for a possible opening and finding none, and learning from several newspaper men that Detroit was not considered a live journalistic town, I to travel , and bought a ticket to Cleveland.  
Riding in sight of the tumbling waves of Lake Erie, I was taken back in thought to my days in Chicago and all those who had already dropped out of my life forever. What a queer, , disconnected thing this living was! Where should I be tomorrow, what doing—the next year—the year after that? Should I ever have any money, any , any friends? So I tortured myself. Arriving in Cleveland at the close of a smoky gray afternoon, I left my bag at the station and sought a room, then walked out to see what I should see. I knew no one. Not a friend anywhere within five hundred miles. My sole resource my little skill as a newspaper worker. Buying the afternoon and morning papers, I examined them with care, copying down their editorial room addresses, then betook me to a small beanery for food.
 
The next morning I was up early, to see as much as I could, to visit the offices of the afternoon papers before noon, then to look in upon the city editors of the two or three morning papers. The latter proved not very friendly and there appeared to be no opening anywhere. But I determined to remain here for a few days studying the city as a city and visiting the same editors each day or as often as they would endure me. If nothing came of it within a week, and no telegram came from my friend H—— in Toledo calling me back, I proposed to move on; to which city I had not as yet made up my mind.
 
The thing that interested me most about Cleveland then was that it was so raw, dark, dirty, smoky, and yet of one thing: force, , , semi-intelligent force. America was then so new industrially, in the furnace stage of its existence. Everything was in the making: fortunes, art, social and commercial life. The most impressive things were its rich men, their homes, factories, clubs, office buildings and institutions of commerce and pleasure generally; and this was as true of Cleveland as of any other city in America.
 
Indeed the thing which held my attention, after I had been in Cleveland a day or two and had established myself in a room in a somber neighborhood once occupied by the very rich, were those great and new residences in Euclid Avenue, with wide lawns and iron or stone statues of stags and dogs and deer, which were occupied by such rich men as John D. Rockefeller, Tom Johnson, and Henry M. Flagler. Rockefeller only a year or two before had given millions to revivify the almost University of Chicago, then a small Baptist college, and was accordingly being hailed as one of the richest men of America. He and his satellites and confreres were already casting a over Cleveland. They were all living here in Euclid Avenue, and I was interested to look up their homes, envying them their wealth of course and wishing that I were famous or a member of a wealthy family, and that I might some day meet one of the beautiful girls I thought must be here and have her fall in love with and make me rich. or or materially, there was nothing to see but business: a few large hotels, like those of every American city, and these few great houses. Add a few theaters and commonplace churches. All American cities and all the inhabitants were busy with but one thing: commerce. They ate, drank and slept trade. In my wanderings I found a huge steel works and a world of low, smoky, pathetic little hovels about it. Although I was not as yet given to reasoning about the profound of equality under democracy, this evidence of the little brain for the big one struck me with great force and produced a good deal of thought later on.
 
The paper with which I was eventually connected was the Cleveland Leader, which represented all that was conservative in the local life. Wandering into its office on the second or third day of my stay, I was met at the desk of the city editor by a small, boyish-looking person of a ferret-like , who wanted to know what I was after. I told him, and he said there was nothing, but on hearing of the papers with which I had been connected and the nature of the work I had done he suggested that possibly I might be able to do something for the Sunday edition. The Sunday editor proved to be a tall, man with sad eyes, a sallow face, sunken cheeks, narrow shoulders and a general air of wearine............