Said one of them: 

“Not every interviewer in New York knows how to write—­how to put a sentence together decently.  And there are perhaps a few who don’t accurately know the difference between impudence and wit.”

A caustic remark, perhaps.  But I have noticed that when the variety of interviewing upon which I have just animadverted becomes the topic, quiet, reasonable Americans are apt to drop into causticity.

Said another: 

“I was a reporter for twelve years, but I was cured of personalities at an early stage—­and by a nigger, too!  I had been interviewing a nigger prize-fighter, and I’d made some remarks about the facial characteristics of niggers in general.  Some other nigger wrote me a long letter of protest, and it ended like this:  ’I’ve never seen you.  But I’ve seen your portraits, and let me respectfully tell you that you’re no Lillian Russell.’”

Some mornings I, too, might have sat down and written, from visual observation, “Let me respectfully tell you that you’re no Lillian Russell.”

Said a third among my companions: 

“No importance whatever is attached to a certain kind of interview in the United States.”

Which I found, later, was quite true in theory, but not in practice.  Whenever, in that kind of interview, I had been made to say something more acutely absurd and maladroit than usual, my friends who watched over me, and to whom I owe so much that cannot be written, were a little agitated—­for about half an hour; in about half an hour the matter had somehow passed from their minds.

“Supposing I refuse to talk to that sort of interviewer?” I asked, at the saloon table.

“The interviews will appear all the same,” was the reply.

My subsequent experience contradicted this.  On the rare occasions when I refused to be interviewed, what appeared was not an interview, but invective.

Let me not be misunderstood.  I have been speaking of only one brand of American interviewer.  I encountered a couple of really admirable women interviewers, not too young, and a confraternity of men who did not disdain an elementary knowledge of their business.  One of these arrived with a written list of questions, took a shorthand note of all I said, and then brought me a proof to correct.  In interviewing this amounts almost to genius....  I have indicated what to me seems a defect—­trifling, possibly, but still a defect—­in the brilliant organization of the great national sport of interviewing.  Were this defect removed, as it could be, the institution might be as perfect as the American oyster.  Than which nothing is more perfect.

* * * * *

“You aren’t drinking your coffee,” said some one, inspecting my cup at the saloon table.

“No,” I answered, firmly; for when the smooth efficiency of my human machine is menaced I am as faddy and nervous as a marine engineer over lubrication.  “If I did, I shouldn’t sleep.”