At the time of the wedding, Page was editor of the St.
Joseph _Gazette_; the fact that he had attained this position, five months after starting at the bottom, sufficiently discloses his aptitude for journalistic work.
Page had now outgrown any Southern particularism with which he may have started life.

He no longer found his country exclusively in the area south of the Potomac; he had made his own the West, the North--New York, Chicago, Denver, as well as Atlanta and Raleigh.

It is worth while insisting on this fact, for the cultivation of a wide-sweeping Americanism and a profound faith in democracy became the qualities that will loom most largely in his career from this time forward.

It is necessary only to read the newspaper letters which he wrote on his Southern trip in 1881 to understand how early his mind seized this new point of view.

Many things which now fell under his observant eye in the Southern States greatly irritated him and with his characteristic impulsiveness he pictured these traits in pungent phrase.