Bill, with his solemn dundreary whiskers, leaped high in the air like a frog, kicking his legs and yelling drunkenly as he took off.

"Look out, Bill," I shouted, "it's nothing but mud there!"

But Bill didn't heed me. He hit with a swish and a thud instead of a splash, and didn't come up.

We put out in our rickety boat.

By that luck that favours the drunkard and fool, we laid hold on Bill's feet sticking out, just under the water. We tugged mightily and brought him forth, turned into a black man by the ooze ... otherwise, unharmed.

* * * * *

It was not till two hours after midnight that they whisked away townward and left me alone, so that the graciousness of silence could enfold me again. I looked forward to a week's peace, before they descended on the camp again. But I had a premonition that there was to be no peace for me there. For Randall had said to me before he drove away....

"You know Pete Willets? Well, he's liable to come here for a few days, during the week ... a nice quiet fellow though ... won't disturb you."

The thought of another visitor did disturb me. Though I knew Pete Willets as a quiet, gentle shoemaker in whom seemed no guile, I wanted to be alone to think and read and write.

Wednesday noon Pete Willets drove up, accompanied by a grubby Woman whom at first glance I did not relish.

"Hello, Johnnie, Frank said we could use the shack for a day or two."

"Forever, as far as I'm concerned," I answered, beginning to tie up my books in a huge bundle as big as a peddler's pack, and as heavy.

Impatiently tying the horse to a post, they were in the shack and immediately prone on my bunk.

As I shouldered my load their murmuring voices full of amorous desire stung me like a gadfly. I hurried off toward Laurel, angry at life.

I explained to Randall why I had left his camp so soon. He was gravely concerned.

"I didn't tell Willets he could have my shack to take Gracie there. This is a bit too thick."

"Who's Gracie?"

"—a bad lot ... a girl that's been on the turf since she was in knee skirts—as long as I've known her. He loves her. She can twist him around her little finger. She's going to get him into something bad some day. He'll do anything she wants. And she's capable of putting him up to anything."

"Willets is weak, when it comes to women ... don't drink much ... a hard worker ... everybody likes him....

"Did you ever notice his limp ... only slight ... scarcely noticeable, isn't it?... he's a corking mechanic as well as shoemaker ... mighty clever ... now for instance, you wouldn't ever have known, unless I told you, that his left leg is made of wood?"

"I wouldn't even suspect it."

"—lost his left leg when he was a brakeman ... made that wooden leg for himself ... it works so smoothly that he's thinking of taking out a patent on it."

"Why does a woman take to a man with a wooden leg?"

"—makes good money ... and he has a way about him with the girls ... he goes about so quietly. He's so gentle and considerate ... acts, but doesn't say much, you know! that's what they like!"

"—damned sorry for his wife and two kids, though; when Willets comes to town again I'm not going to let him have my shack any more ... might be some trouble ... divorce or something."

There was trouble and very shortly. In a month Willets had poisoned his wife ... with rough-on-rats ... and the quiet little shoemaker went to the penitentiary for life ... a life-time of shoe-making.

* * * * *

I rented a tent and pitched it on an island in the middle of the Kaw, or Kansas River. There I was alone. I rented a boat to take out my possessions.

I lived naked till I grew brown all over. I studied and read and wrote to my full desire, there in the grateful silence of trees and waters—a solitude broken only by an occasional train streaming its white trail of smoke as it whistled and raced round the curve of shining track toward Laurel.

I read Josephus entirely through, haltingly, line by line, in the Greek. I read all the books the "stack" at the university could afford me on New Testament life and times, in preparation for my play on Judas.

My only companions were a flock of tiny mud-hens with their dainty proud little rooster. I heard them talking in bird-language, saw them paddling with diminutive gravity up and down in the mud, on the island mud-bank just beneath the high place on which my tent was pitched.

When I grew lonesome for company, human company, I swam ashore, my clothes tied on top of my head to keep them dry, and, dressing, walked into Laurel. Where I lounged about for the day on the streets, or in the stores, or in the livery stables ... I knew everybody and everybody knew me, and we had some fine times, talking.

I had access to the local Carnegie Library as well as to the university "stack".

My food did not cost me above a dollar a week. For I went on a whole wheat diet, and threw my frying pan away.

I was the tramp, as ever, only I was stationary.

* * * * *

The opening days of the fall term came round again. Summer weather, hot and belated, lingered on. I was now more native to the river than to life in a four-walled room and on street pavements.

I debated seriously whether I should return to classes, or just keep on studying as I was, staying in my tent, and taking books out at the two libraries. I knew that they'd allow me to continue drawing out books at the university, even though I attended classes no longer—Professor Langworth would see to that.

Also, most of the professors would whisper "good riddance" to themselves. I camped at their gates too closely with questions. I never accepted anything as granted. The "good sports" among them welcomed this attitude of mine, especially the younger bunch of them—who several times invited me to affairs of theirs, behind closed blinds, where good wine was poured, and we enjoyed fine times together....

I was invited on condition that I would not let the student-body know of these sub rosa fiestas. Which were dignified and unblameworthy ... only, wine and beer went around till a human mellowness and conversational glow was reached.

* * * * *

A trifling incident renewed my resolve to continue as a student regularly enrolled....

Though considered a freak and nut, I was generally liked among the students, and liked most of them in turn....

They used frequently to say—"'s too bad Johnnie Gregory won't act like the rest of the world, he's such a likeable chap...."

As the boys came back to school I went about renewing acquaintances.

The afternoon of the day of the "trifling incident" I was returning from a long visit to Jack Travers and the Sig-Kappas.

It was about ten o'clock when I reached the river-bank opposite my island. There was a brilliant moon up. If daylight could be silver-coloured it was day.

I stood naked on the water's edge, ready to wade out for my swim back to my island. My clothes were trussed securely, for dryness, on my head.

A rustling, a slight clearing of the throat, halted me.

I glanced through a vista of bushes.

There sat a girl in the full moonlight. She had a light easel before her. She was trying to paint, evidently, the effects of the moon on the landscape and the river. Painters have since told me that it is impossible to do that. It is too dark to see the colours. Nevertheless the girl was trying.

I stopped statue-still to find if I had been seen. When assured that I had not, I slowly squatted down, and, naked as I was, crept closer, hiding behind a screen of bushes. And I fastened my eyes on her, and forgot who I was. For the moon made her appear almost as plain as day. And she was very beautiful. And I was caught in a sudden trap of love again.

Here, I held no doubt, was my Ideal. I could not distinguish the colour of her hair. But she was maiden and slenderly wonderful.

I lay flat, hoping that she would not hear my breath as she calmly painted. My heart beat so hard it seemed to shake the ground beneath me.

She, too, was original, what the world would call "eccentric" ... out here, three miles from town, with the hours verging toward midnight ... seated on the river bank, trying to capture the glory of the moon on canvas.

But, unusual as her action was, there was nothing mad about her mode of dressing ... her white middy blouse, edged with blue ... her flowing tie ... her dainty, blue serge skirt and dainty shoes.

I lay there, happy in being near her, the unknown.

After a long time she rose ... gave a sigh ... brushed her hand over her hair.

Fascination held me close as she stooped over ... began leisurely to untie her shoes ... set them, removed, aside, toe to toe and heel to heel, equal, as if for mathematical exactness ... paused a moment ... lifted her skirts, drew off her garters with a circular downward sweep ... drew down her stockings....

She sat with her stockings off, stuffed into her shoes,—her skirt up to her hips, gazing meditatively at her naked legs held straight before her.

I was close enough to hear her breathing—or so keen in my aroused senses that I thought I heard it. She wiggled her toes to herself as she meditated.

She paused as if hesitating to go on with her undressing. A twig snapped. She came to her knees and looked about, startled, then subsided again, tranquil and sure of her solitude.

* * * * *

She stood in the moonlight, naked. My gaze grew fat with pleasure as it fed on her nakedness....

She stepped down to the water's edge, dabbling her outstretched toes in the flow.

Ankle-deep, she stood and stooped. She scooped up water and dashed it over her breasts. She rose erect a moment and gazed idly about.

Then, binding her hair in a careful knot, she went in with a plunge and I saw that she could swim well.

My heart shook and thundered so that its pulse pervaded all my body with its violence. I held in curb a mad, almost irresistible impulse to rush in after her, crying out that I was a poet ... that this was the true romance ... that we must throw aside the conventions ... that no one would ever know.

Then I thought of my skinniness and ugliness in comparison with her slight but perfect beauty. And I knew that it would repel her. And I held still in utter shame, not being good-looking enough to join her in the river.

I lay prone, almost fainting, dizzy, not having the strength to creep away, as I now considered I must do.

I saw her return and watched her as she slowly resumed her clothes, piece by leisurely piece. She folded her camp stool, packed her small easel in a case and started off toward town.

Shouldn't I now intercept her, explain who I was, and offer to escort her along the tracks back to town? For it was surely dangerous for her to come so far into the night, alone. There were tramps ... and the stray criminal negro from the Bottoms ... God knows what else, in her path!

But my timidity let her pass on alone.

I needed the coolness of the water about me, as I swam out to my tent. I forgot my clothes on my head and they soused in the water as I swam. All night I tossed, sleepless. I lay delirious with remembrance of her ... imagined myself with her as I lay there, and whispered terms of love and endearment into the dark.

Who was she? One thing I knew—she must be a student, and an art student under Professor Grant in the Fine Arts Department.

This was the incident that decided me to enroll again as regular student, and to fold my tent, leave my solitary island, and return to town ... where I sought out Frank Randall, and he again offered me the room I had given up. And he gave me work as his bookkeeper, several hours of the day ... which work I undertook to perform in return for my room. In addition he gave me two dollars a week extra.

* * * * *

One afternoon soon after my enrollment, I met Ally Merton coming down hill.

"Well, here I am, as I said I'd be," said he.

He was, as usual, dressed to perfection—not a minute ahead of the style, not a minute behind ... gentle-voiced and deferential, learning to be everywhere without being noticed anywhere.

"I see you're still eccentric in dress ... sandals ... shirt open at the neck ... denim too ... cheap brown socks ... corduroys...."

"Yes, but look," I jested in reply, "I wear a tie ... and the ends pull exactly even. That's the one thing you taught me about correct dressing that I'll never forget."

"If I could only persuade you, Johnnie, of the importance of little things, of putting one's best foot forward ... of personal appearance ... why create an initial prejudice in the minds of people you meet, that you'll afterward have to waste valuable time in trying to remove?"

"Where are you putting up, Ally?"

"At the Phi Nus" (the bunch that went in the most for style and society) "I'm a Phi Nu, keep in touch with me, Johnnie."

"Keep in touch with me," was Merton's stock phrase....

"Mr. Mackworth asked me particularly to look you up, and 'take care of' you ... you made a hit with him ... but he's very much concerned about you—thinks you're too wild and erratic."

* * * * *

The tinshop was a noisy place, as I have said before. It was as uproarious as a boiler factory. All day long there was hammering, banging, and pounding below ... but I was growing used to it ... as you do to everything which must be.

Keeping Randall's books occupied a couple of hours each morning or afternoon, whenever I chose. All the rest of the day I had free....

* * * * *

I had almost come to the conclusion that the girl I had seen in the moonlight had been an apparition conjured up by my own imagination, when I glimpsed her, one afternoon, walking toward Hewitt Hall, where the art classes held session, in the upper rooms. I followed the girl, a long way behind. I saw her go in through the door to a class where already a group of students sat about with easels, painting from a girl-model ... fully clothed ... for painting from the nude was not allowed. They had threshed that proposition out long before, Professor Grant explained to me, once,—and the faculty had decided, in solemn conclave, that the farmers throughout the state were not yet prepared for that step....

I sought Grant's friendship. He had studied in the Julian Academy at Paris, in his youth. He invited me to his house for tea, often; where I met many of his students, but never, as I had hoped, the girl of the moonlight....

But by careful and guarded inquiry I found out who she was ... a girl from the central portion of the state, named Vanna Andrews.

When Grant asked me to pose for his class, sandals, open shirt, corduroys, and all ... I agreed ... almost too eagerly ... he would pay me twenty-five cents an hour.

My first day Vanna was not there. On the second, she came ... late ... her tiny, white face, crowned with its dark head of hair ... "a star in a jet-black cloud," I phrased, to myself. She sailed straight in like a ship.

When she had settled herself,—beginning to draw, she appraised me coolly, impartially, for a moment ... took my dimensions for her paper, pencil held at arm's length....

Slowly, though I fought it back, a red wave of confusion surged over my face and neck. I turned as red as ochre. I grew warm with perspiration of embarrassment. I gazed fixedly out through the window....

"You're getting out of position," warned Professor Grant.

Vanna still observed me with steadfast, large, blue eyes. She started her sketch with a few, first, swift lines.

"Excuse me," I rose, "I feel rather ill." I posed, "I've been up all night drinking strong coffee and writing poems," I continued, my voice rising in insincere, noisy falsetto.

"Step down a minute and rest, then, Mr. Gregory," advised Professor Grant, puzzled, a grimace of distaste on his face.

"Isn't he silly," I overheard a girl student whisper to a loud-dressed boy, whose easiness of manner with the female students I hated and envied him for....

I resumed my pose. I blushed no more. I endured the cool, level, impersonal glances of the girl I had fallen in love with....

"The model's a little wooden, don't you think, professor?" she observed, to tease me, perhaps. She could not help but sense the cause of my agitation. But then she was used to creating a stir among men. Her beauty perturbed almost the entire male student body.

* * * * *

I noticed that her particular chum was a very homely girl. I straightway found charms in this girl that no one had ever found before. And Alice and I became friends. And, while posing, I came before the time, because she, I discovered, was always beforehand, touching up her work.

Alice was a stupid, clumsy girl, but she adored Vanna and liked nothing better than to talk about her chum and room-mate. She took care of Vanna as one would take care of a helpless baby.

"Vanna is a genius, if there ever was one ... she doesn't know her hands from her feet in practical affairs ... but she's wonderful ... all the boys," and Alice sighed with as much envy as her nature would allow—"all the boys are just crazy about her ... but she isn't in love with any of them!"

My heart gave a great bound of hope at these last words.

"Professor Grant's students—about two-thirds of them—have enrolled in his classes, because she's there."

And then I went cold with jealousy and with despair ... one so popular could never see me ... if it were only later, when my fame as a poet had come!

* * * * *

"Vanna has to be waited on hand and foot. I don't mind though," continued Alice, "I hang up her clothes for her ... make her bed ... sweep and dust our rooms ... it makes me happy to wait on anything so beautiful!" and the face of the homely girl glowed with joy....

* * * * *

I was poor and miserable. I bent my head forward, forgetful of my determination to walk erect and proud, with a pride I did not possess.

Langworth was coming behind me. He slapped me on the back. I whirled, full of resentment. But changed the look to a smile when I perceived who it was....

"Why, Johnnie, what's the matter? you're walking like an old man. Brace up. Is anything wrong?"

"No, I was just thinking."

* * * * *

The first cold blasts of winter howled down upon us. No snow yet, but winds that rushed about the buildings on the hill, full of icy rain, and with a pushing strength like the shoulders of invisible giants out of the fourth dimension ... we men kept on the sidewalks when we could ... but the winds blew the girls off into the half-hardened mud, and, at times, were so violent, that the girls could not extricate themselves, but they stood still, waiting for help, their skirts whirling up into their very faces.

It was what the boys called "a sight for sore eyes."

They stood in droves, in the sheltered entrances of the halls, and occasionally darted out by ones and twos and threes to rescue distressed co-eds.

* * * * *

Down in the room over the tin and plumbing shop in which I lived, I found it cold indeed. I could afford no heat ... and, believing in windows open, knew every searching drop in the barometer.

But never in my life was I happier, despite my secretly cherished love for Vanna. For I assured myself in my heart of certain future fame, the fame I had dreamed of since childhood. And I wore every hardship as an adornment, conscious of the greatness of my cause.

Isolation; half-starvation; cold; inadequate clothing;—all counted for the glory of poetry, as martyrs had accepted persecution and suffering for the glory of God.

My two hours of daily work irked me. I wanted the time for my writing and studying ... but I still continued living above the din of the shop that I had grown accustomed to, by this time.

Rarely, when the nights were so subarctic as to be almost unbearable, did I slip down through the skylight and seek out the comparative warmth of the shop ... and there, on the platform where the desk stood so that it could overlook all the store, I wrote and studied.

But Randall said this worried the night watchman too much, my appearing and disappearing, all hours of the night. He didn't relish coming every time to see if the store was being burglarised.

* * * * *

The outside world was beginning to notice me. My poems, two of which I had sold to the Century, two to Everybody's, and a score to the Independent, were, as soon as they appeared in those magazines, immediately copied by the Kansas newspapers. And the Kansas City Star featured a story of me at Laurel, playing up my freaks and oddities ... but accompanied by a flattering picture that "Con" Cummins, our college photographer, had taken.

Also I was receiving occasional letters from strangers who had read my poems. But they were mostly letters from cranks ... or from girls very, very young and sentimental, or on the verge of old-maidhood, who were casting about for some escape from the narrow daily life that environed them....

But one morning a letter came to me so scrawlingly addressed that I marvelled at the ability of the postal authorities in deciphering it. The writer of it hailed me as a poet of great achievement already, but of much greater future promise.... Mr. Lephil, editor of the National Magazine, for whom he was writing a serial, had showed him some of my verse, and he must hasten to encourage me ... I puzzled long over the writer's signature.... It could not be possible! but it seemed to be inscribed with the name of a novelist famous for his investigations of capitalistic abuses of the people ... the author of the sensational novel, The Slaughter House, which was said to out-Zola Zola—Penton Baxter.

I hurried downstairs from my attic, to intercept some friend who would confirm me in my interpretation of the signature.

It was Travers I ran into. I showed the letter to him.

"By Jove! It is Baxter!" he cried.

He was as overwhelmed as I had been.

"Say, Johnnie, you must really amount to something, with all these people back East paying such attention to you ... come on into Kuhlman's and have a "coke" with me."

In Kuhlman's, the college foregathering place, the ice cream and refreshment parlour of the town, we joined with Jimmy Thompson, our famous football quarterback. The room was full of students eating ice cream and drinking coco-cola and ice cream sodas.

"Say, let me print this."

"No, but you may put an item in the Laurelian, if you want to."

"I must write a story for the Star about it."

It would have pleased my vanity to have had Jack put the story in the papers, but I was afraid of offending Baxter ... afterward I learned that it would not have offended him ... he had the vanity of a child, as well as I.

I answered his letter promptly, in terms of what might have seemed, to the outside eye, excessive adulation. But Penton Baxter was to me a great genius ... and nothing I could have written in his praise would have overweighed the debt I owed him for that fine letter of encouragement.

* * * * *

So at last I was reaping the fruits of my years of struggle for the poetic ideal—my years of poverty and suffering.

A belated student at college, twenty-five years of age ... a tramp for the sake of my art ... as I sat in my cold room ... propped up by my one overturned chair ... in bed ... betaking myself there to keep from freezing while I wrote and dreamed and read and studied,—I burst out singing some of my own verses, making the tune to the lines as I went along.

"John Gregory, you are a great man, and some day all the world shall know and acknowledge it!" I said over and over again to myself....

"And now, Vanna, my love, my darling," I cried aloud, so that if anyone overheard, the auditor would think I was going mad, "now, Vanna, you shall see ... in a year I shall have my first book of poetry out ... and fame and money for royalties will be mine ... then I will dare speak to you boldly of my love for you ... and you will be glad and proud of it ... and be happy to marry me and be my wife!"

* * * * *

In the meantime Vanna Andrews was daily seen driving down the streets with Billy Conway, whose father was Governor of a Western State ... as I saw her going by in her fragile beauty, I bowed my head to her, and in return came a slight nod of mere, passing acquaintanceship.

I made friends with Billy, as I had done with Vanna's homely room-mate ... who thought I was becoming interested in her—because I often spoke in Vanna's dispraise, to throw her off the track, and to encourage her to speak at greater length of the woman I loved and worshipped from a-far.

Now I sought through Billy Conway a nearer opportunity for her favour. He approached me one day while we were out on the football field, practicing formations. I was on the scrub team—whose duty it was to help knock the big team into shape.

"Johnnie, you know Vanna, don't you?... Vanna Andrews, the art student."

"Slightly," I concealed, thanking God I hadn't blushed straightway at the mention of her name ... "—met her when I posed for Professor Grant's classes."

"She's a beaut, ain't she?"

"Everybody thinks so."

"Don't you?"

"She'd be perfect, if she weren't so thin," I answered, almost smothering from the thumping of my heart.

"I've often wondered what makes you so cold toward the girls ... when you write poetry ... poets are supposed to be romantic."

"We have a good imagination."

"—wish you'd exercise your imagination a little for me ... I'd pay you for it."

"For what?"

"—writing poems on Vanna, for me."

My heart gave a wild jump of joy at the opportunity.

"I'll think it over. But if I do so, I won't take anything for it."

Billy shook my hand fervently.

"You're all right, Gregory ... it'll help me a lot ... I've got a case on her, I'll admit."

"Come on!" roared Coach Shaughnessy, "get on the job."

He began calling letters and numbers for a play.

And just for a joke, he took "Barrel" Way, the two hundred pound fullback, aside, and "Rock-crusher" Morton ... he whispered them, I afterward learned, to give me rough stuff, go through me with a bang....

"Rock-crusher" took the ball, with "Barrel" for interference ... they came flashing my way.

I was so frenzied with joy over the prospect of getting my poems through to Vanna, even if it was in another man's behalf, that I flung myself forward and brought both stars down with only a yard gained.

Shaughnessy gave a whoop of joyous amazement and the other boys shouted, and kidded "Barrel" and "Rock-crusher," the latter of whom won his nickname from the gentle way he had of hitting his antagonists with his hard knees as he ran into them, and bowling them over ... he was a recruit from the hurdles, who ran "high."

Shaughnessy came over to me.

"Gregory, I want to say right here, I wish you took enough studies, and you could make sub on the big team right off. You're skinny, but you've got the mettle I wish all my boys had."

No sooner was I out of my football clothes than I hurried to Kuhlman's, drank three coco-colas to stimulate me, and went to my room, to write my first poem for Vanna....

Nearly every day Billy received a poem from me. Henceforth, when I passed Vanna, I received a gentle, appreciative smile ... but I was too timid even to speak to her ... and too self-conscious of my clothes, which were worn and frayed....

* * * * *

There were a few negro students at Laurel. One of them, a girl named Matty Smith, approached me in the library one day, introduced herself as one of the chairmen of the entertainment committee of the First African Methodist Church, and asked me if I would come and give them a talk the following Saturday night....

The night came ... I found myself on the platform with the preacher by my side. They had seated me in the chair of honour.

First the congregation prayed and sang ... such singing, so clear and soaring and melodious. It rocked the very church, burst out through the windows in great surges of melody.

I was introduced as their friend, as the coloured man's friend.

I spoke. I read my poems simply and unaffectedly.

Afterward I shook hands all round.

Matty Smith, the negro girl, as black as soot, and thoroughly African, stood by me as introducer. If I had shut my eyes, her manner of speech might not have been told from that of any cultured white woman's. She was as refined and sensitive a human being as I have ever met.

As I walked back to my attic over the plumber shop, it was with head erect and heaving chest. I deemed myself a champion of the negro race. I was almost putting myself alongside of Lincoln and John Brown.

Their reason for inviting me was that I had had a scathing poem printed, in the New York Independent, on the lynching of a negro in Lincoln's home State of Illinois.

* * * * *

Within two days of my talk at the First Methodist African Church, I met simultaneously in front of the library, two women, each going in opposite directions....

"Good afternoon, Mr. Gregory!"

It was Matty Smith. She was hesitating for a cue from me. She wished to stop and thank me again for my speaking.

But from the other side Vanna Andrews was passing.

I ignored Matty with a face like a stone wall.

"Good afternoon!" I bowed to Vanna ... who ignored me ... perhaps not seeing me.

The fearful, hurt look in the negro girl's eyes made me so ashamed of myself that I wanted to run away and hide forever somewhere.

That night I was so covered with shame over what I had done to another human soul, a soul perhaps as proud and fine as any in Laurel, that it was not till dawn that sleep visited me....

So I was just as rotten, just as snobbish, just as fearful of the herd, as were these other human beings whom I made fun of as the bourgeoisie.

* * * * *

Speaking with Riley, one of the English professors, about the mixture of colours on the hill....

"I must confess," he admitted sincerely, "that I feel awkward indeed when a negro student walks by my side ... even for a few steps...."

Coach Shaughnessy declared himself boldly—

"I'll admit frankly to you, Gregory, but don't, of course, repeat what I say—that I'll never let a nigger play on the football team ... when they sweat they stink too badly ... no, sir, John Brown's State or not, the negro was never meant to mix with the white on terms of equality."

* * * * *

It was mainly out of consideration for Langworth, and desire to please him, that I now joined the Unitarian Church, of which all the old settlers of Laurel were members. This included a testy old gentleman named Colonel Saunders, who had been one of John Brown's company, had quarrelled with him,—and who now, every year, maintained, at the annual meeting of old settlers, that Brown had been a rogue and murderer ... a mad man, going about cutting up whole families with corn knives....

At this juncture in his speech, which was made undeviatingly every year, a sentimental woman would rise and cry out—

"John Brown, God bless him, whatever you say, Colonel Saunders, his soul still goes marching on—"

"I grant that, madam—that his soul still goes marching on—I never contested that—but where does it go marching on!"

Then the yearly riot of protests and angry disputation would wake.

And every spring, in anticipation of this melee, reporters from the Kansas City papers were sent to cover the story of the proceedings of the Old Settlers' Society.

* * * * *

Bob Fitzsimmons stopped off at our town, with his show. Though I couldn't afford to attend the performance, I did race down to the station, go up to him, and ask the privilege of a handshake.

His huge, freckled ham of a hand closed over mine in a friendly manner ... which disappeared up to the wrist. He exchanged a few, simple, shy words with me from a mouth smashed to shapelessness by many blows. He smiled gently, with kind eyes.

I was prouder of this greeting than of all my growing associations with well-known literary figures. And I boasted to the boys of meeting "Bob" ... inventing what I said to "Bob" and what "Bob" said to me, ad infinitum.

* * * * *

Though the great athlete shared my admiration with the great writer, yet my staying awake at night writing, my but one meal a day, usually,—except when I was invited out to a fraternity house or the house of a professor—and my incessant drinking of coffee and coco-cola to keep my ideas whipped up—all these things incapacitated me from attaining any high place in athletic endeavour. I was fair at boxing and could play a good scrub game of football. But my running, on which I prided myself most—I entered for the two-mile, one field day, and won only third place. I had gone back in form since Hebron days.

Dr. Gunning, head of our physical instruction, informed me that, exercise as I might, I could never hope to be stronger or put on more weight ... "you had too many hardships and privations in your growing years ... and you are of too nervous a temperament."

* * * * *

But my love for Vanna had regularised me somewhat. I discarded my sandals and bought Oxford ties. And I preserved a crease in my trousers by laying them, folded carefully, under my mattress every night. And I took to wearing shirts with white linen collars....

And I kept a picture of the girl I adored, secretly, among my manuscripts—it was one I had begged of "Con" Cummins, frankly taking him into my confidence as to my state of heart toward Vanna. Which confidence "Con" never abused, though it might have afforded endless fields of fun.

"Con" framed the picture for me.

When alone with it, I often actually knelt to it, as to a holy image. And I kissed and kissed it, till it was quite faded away.

* * * * *

Emma Silverman, the great anarchist leader, came to Laurel, with her manager, Jack Leitman. I went to the Bellman House, the town's swellest hotel, to see her. I had never met her but had long admired her for her activities and bravery.

I found her a thick-built woman, after the gladiatorial fashion ... as she moved she made me think of a battleship going into action. There was something about her face ... a squareness of jaw, a belligerency, that reminded me of Roosevelt, whom I had seen twice ... once, at Mt. Hebron, when he had made a speech from the chapel platform ... (when I had determined not to join in the general applause of one whom I considered a mere demagogue—but, before I knew it, found myself on my feet roaring inarticulately as he strode in) and again, after he had returned from his African expedition, and had come to Laurel to dedicate a fountain set up for the local horses and dogs by the S.P.C.A.

Jack Leitman looked to me like a fat nincompoop. Such a weakling as great women must necessarily, it seems, "fall for." But he was an efficient manager. Possessed of a large voice and an insistent manner, he sold books by the dozen before and after Emma Silverman's lectures....

Miss Silverman already knew of me through Summershire, the wealthy socialist editor and owner of Summershire's Magazine, and Penton Baxter. It thrilled me when she called me by my first name....

Her first lecture was on Sex. The hall was jammed to the doors by a curiosity-moved crowd.

She began by assuming that she was not talking to idiots and cretins, but to men and women of mature minds—so she could speak as she thought in a forthright manner. She inveighed against the double standard. When someone in the auditorium asked what she meant by the single standard she replied, she meant sexual expression and experience for man and woman on an equal footing ... the normal living of life without which no human being could be really decent—and that regardless of marriage and the conventions!

"The situation as it is, is odious ... all men, with but few exceptions, have sexual life before marriage, but they insist that their wives come to them in that state of absurd ignorance of their own bodily functions and consequent lack of exercise of them, which they denominate 'purity.' ...

"I doubt if there is a solitary man in this audience—a married man—who has not had premarital intercourse with women."

All the while I kept my eye on Professor Wilton, who sat near me, in the row ahead ... he was flushing furiously in angry, puritanic dissent ... and I knew him well enough to foresee a forthcoming outburst of protest.

"Yes, I think I can safely say that there is not one married man here who can honestly claim that he came to his wife with that same physical 'purity' which he required of her."

Wilton leaped to his feet in a fury ... the good, simple soul. He was so indignant that the few white hairs on his head worked up sizzling with his emotion....

"Here's one!" he shouted, forgetting in his earnest anger the assembled audience, most of whom knew him.

There followed such an uproar of merriment as I have never seen the like before nor since. The students, of course, howled with indescribable joy ... Emma Silverman choked with laughter. Jack Leitman rolled over the side table on which he had set the books to sell as the crowd passed out—

After the deafening cries, cat-calls and uproars, Emma grew serious.

"I don't know who you are," she cried to Professor Wilton, "but I'll take chances in telling you that you're a liar!"

Again Wilton was on his feet in angry protest.

"Shame on you, woman! have you no shame!" he shouted.

This sally brought the house down utterly. The boys hooted and cat-called and stamped again....

Emma Silverman laughed till the tears streamed down her face....

* * * * *

During the four days she remained in Laurel her lectures were crowded.

* * * * *

Walking up the hill one day, I overtook Professor Wilton, under whom I had studied botany, and whom I liked, knowing he was sincere and had spoken the incredible though absolute truth.

"That woman, that anarchist friend of yours, Gregory, is a coarse woman!"

I rose to Emma's defence ... but he kept repeating ... "no, no ... she is nothing but a coarse, depraved woman."

* * * * *

At my instigation, the Sig-Kaps gave an afternoon tea for her. And I was proud to act as her introducer. The boys liked her. She was like a good gale of wind to the minds and souls of us.

* * * * *

I saw Emma and Jack off at the train. I carried two of her grips for her.

"Take Johnnie with you!" jovially shouted some of the boys—a motor car full of them—Phi Alphs—as we stepped to the station platform....

She answered them with a jolly laugh, a wave of the hand....

"No, I'll leave him here ... you need a few like him with you!"

* * * * *

"I have something on my conscience," remarked Miss Silverman to me, "Johnnie, do you really think that old professor was speaking the truth?"

"I'm sure of it, Miss Silverman."

"Why, then, I'm heartily sorry ... and it was rough of me ... and will you tell the professor for me that I sincerely apologise for having hurt his feelings ... tell him I have so many jackasses attending my lectures all over the country, who rise and say foolish and insincere things, just to stand in well with the communities they live in—that sometimes it angers me, their hypocrisy—and then I blaze forth pretty strong and lay them flat!"

* * * * *

Professor Wilton was a Phi Alph. From that time he was spoken of as "the only Phi Alph Virgin."

* * * * *

The periods when I had rested secure in the knowledge of where my next meal was coming from, had been few. Life had pressed me close to its ragged edge ever since I could remember.

Now I was accorded a temporary relief. Penton Baxter wrote me that he had procured me a patron ... Henry Belton, the millionaire Single-Taxer, had consented to endow me at fifteen dollars a week, for six months. I had informed Baxter, in one of my many letters to him—for we had developed an intimate correspondence—that I had a unique fairy drama in mind, but could not write it because of the harassment of my struggle for bread and life.... I had laid aside for the present my projected "Judas."

* * * * *

Singing all the time, I packed my books in a large box which the corner grocer gave me, and, giving up my noisy room over the tinshop, I was off to the Y.M.C.A., where I engaged a room, telling the secretary, who knew me well, of my good luck, and enjoining him not to tell anyone else ... which I promptly did myself....

I selected one of the best rooms, a corner one, with three windows through which floods of light streamed. It was well-furnished. The bed was the finest I had ever had to sleep in.

Immediately I went to Locker's, the smart students' clothier, and put on a ready-made suit of clothes, of blue serge. And I charged new shirts and little white collars ... and several flowing ties. And a fine, new pair of shoes.

"You sure look nifty," commented Locker, who himself waited on me.

Then I went to a bookstore and plunged recklessly, purchasing Gosse and Garnett's Illustrated History of English Literature, in four volumes, an expensive set.

I charged everything on the strength of my endowment, and, of course, in order to gain the credit I sought, I showed Baxter's letter, and pledged each storekeeper not to spread the story....

Before nightfall practically the whole student body knew of my good luck. And Jack Travers had found me, lying back, luxuriously clad in my newly acquired, big blue bathrobe, in my morris chair....

He looked me over with keen amusement.

Somehow, for several years, my one dream of luxury and affluence had been to own a flowered bathrobe to lounge in, and to wear on the athletic field. I had hitherto had to be content with a shabby overcoat.

On my new sectional bookcase stood a statue of the Flying Mercury, that my eye might continually drink in my ideal of physical perfection. Opposite that, stood my plaster cast of Apollo Belvedere, as indicative of the god of song that reigned over my thoughts and life.

* * * * *

"Jack, I want you to come and have supper with me!"

"Johnnie, you are just like a big baby ... all right, I'll dine with you, after I've shot in the story about your endowment to the Star."

"Hurry up, then,—it's after five now. I've never had enough money before, to treat you ... it's you that have always treated me."

"Where'll we dine?"

"At the swellest place in town, the Bellman House ... Walsh will charge me." Walsh Summers was the proprietor.

* * * * *

Big, fat Walsh welcomed me and Travers.

"No, Johnnie, I won't charge you. Instead, you and Jack are dining as guests of the house."

And he would have it no other way.

* * * * *

Ally Merton was right about appearances. To have your shirts laundered regularly makes a man a different being. People that only noticed me before with a sort of surreptitious mockery now began to treat me with surprised respect. Professors invited me even more—the more conservative of them—to dine at their homes.

And it was delightful to have living quarters where there was both hot and cold running water. I took a cold bath, every morning, after my exercise, and a hot bath, every night, before going to bed.

The place was well-heated, too. I no longer had to sit up in bed, the covers drawn to my chin to keep from freezing, while I read, studied, wrote. Nor did I need sit on my hands, in alternation, to keep one warm while I rhymed with the other, during those curious spells of inspiration, those times of ecstasy—occurring mostly in the night—when I would write and write so rapidly that morning would find me often not able to decipher the greater part of what I had written ... five or ten poems in a night ... scrawled madly almost like automatic writing....

* * * * *

William Jennings Bryan came to talk to us at our school auditorium. His lecture, The Prince of Peace, soon degenerated into an old-fashioned attack on science and the evolutionary theory.

The professors sat bored and mute on the platform beside him, while he evacuated the forty-year-old wheeze of "your great-great-great-grandfather might have been a monkey, but, thank God, mine was not!" he won the usual great response of handclapping and laughter with this....

And then he held out a glass of water, to prove that miracles might happen, because God, being omnipotent, could, at will, suspend natural laws.

"Look at this glass of water. I hold it out at arm's length, so. If I did not hold it, it would drop to the floor and shatter into pieces. Thus I, by a human act, suspend the law of gravitation ... so God!—" There was huzzaing and applause. Several professors uneasily shifted the crossing of their knees ... one or two stared diplomatically at the ceiling.

I grew angry and sent forth several sharp hisses before I knew what I was doing ... the effect was an electric stillness for the moment. Then a roar of indignant applause drowned my protest. And I stopped and remained quiet, with much craning of necks about me, to look at me.

As the crowd poured out, I ran out into the road, from group to group, and, wherever I found a professor walking along, I vociferated my protest at our allowing such a back-water performance at the State's supposed centre of intelligence.

"But, Gregory, it makes no difference ... the argument is settled, let platform orators like Bryan tilt at windmills all they may."

"The hell it doesn't make a difference! if you professors are worth your salt, you won't let a Chautauqua man get by with such bunco."

* * * * *

The writing of my fairy drama progressed amain.

I mailed a copy of it to Penton Baxter, who said that it had genuine merit. Was not great, but showed great promise.

Henry Belton, from London, wrote me that it was beautiful and fine, but too eccentric for production in even the eccentric theatre.

And Belton kept deluging me with Single Tax pamphlets. And I wrote him hot letters in reply, villifying the Single Tax theory and upholding revolutionary Socialism. And he grew angry with me, and informed me that he had meditated keeping me in his patronage longer, but I was so obdurate that he would end my remittance with the six months ... as, in fact, was all that was originally promised me.

I replied that it made no difference ... that I would be always grateful to him. His letters stopped. The money stopped. But I went on living at the Y.M.C.A., charging up rent ... said that I was nearing the end of my rope again, glad because I had shown to myself that I was capable of sustained creative effort.

* * * * *

Many well-known men came to Laurel for lectures to the students.

Lyman Abbott appeared.

"The ancient bell-wether of the Standard Oil," Travers irreverently dubbed him.

The College Y.M.C.A. accorded him a reception. I was one of those invited to meet him.

After he had delivered a brief talk on God and The Soul, questions were invited—meant only to be politely put, that the speaker might shine. But my question was not put for the sake of social amenity ... though I'll admit, just a little for the sake of showing off.

"Dr. Abbott," I asked, "it is quite possible that there are other worlds in the sky—that, also, the rest of the planets either are or will be, homes for souls, for living beings equal to or higher than our present human grade of development?"

"Yes, yes, that is quite probable."

"Well, then, God, to prove a just God, would have to send his Son to be crucified a million times—once for each world ... for, if He did not, then the souls on these worlds would either be damned without a chance for salvation, or, if God made an exception in their case, that would be an unfair deal—for us to suffer from a fault other worlds are free of."

Dr. Abbott hemmed and hawed.

"It is not yet proven that there are other inhabited worlds. I an only dealing with questions of practical theology," he answered, with some heat and an attempt to be sarcastic.

The members of the Y.M.C.A. were indignant at me for putting a maladroit question.

"It doesn't do to invite Gregory anywhere. You can't tell what stuff he might pull."

"A legitimate question—" egged on Travers at my side, "bump the old boy again, Johnnie."

But I was not given another chance. After a short but painful silence the Secretary rose and put a suave and stereotyped query ... and others filled the breach in rapid succession. And the prestige of the great theologian was salvaged.

Commencement day approached. There came to deliver the address for the day, George Harvey, then editor of Harper's Weekly. Travers was assigned to interview Harvey....

"The fellow's a pompous big stiff," complained Jack, "the kind that makes a fetish of morning and evening dress ... wears kid gloves ... and a top hat ... he has both valet and secretary with him."

"That's no disgrace. Don't you think, Jack, that we Middle-Westerners only make fun of such people and their habits for the reason that we're either unable to do the same, or do not dare do it because of our jealousy of each other—our so-called hick democratic spirit?"

"There's a lot of truth in that. But fundamentally I would say that the newspaper editors who are here this week, holding a conference and tendering Harvey a banquet, mean their plainness of dress and life ... and do not hanker after the clubman's way of life as Harvey represents it to their eyes ... you just watch for what Ed. Lowe and Billy Dorgan do to our Eastern chap at the banquet ... they'll kid him till he's sick."

That banquet will live in the memory of Kansas newspapermen.

Harvey, when he entered the hall where the journalists were already seated, first snapped his top hat sidewise to his attending valet. Then he sat down grandly.

Billy Dorgan and Ed. Lowe "rode Harvey around," as Jack phrased it. The distinguished editor, with his solemnity, invited thrusts. Besides, most of those present were what was denominated as "progressive" ... Jarvis Alexander Mackworth was there ... and Alden ... and Tobbs, afterward governor.

* * * * *

The next day Travers printed a supposititious interview with Harvey's English valet on how it felt to be a valet of a great man. Both the valet and Harvey waxed furious, it was said.

* * * * *

Arthur Brisbane visited us. He ran down from Kansas City over night. This man was Jack Travers' God ... and we of the Press or Scoop Club—a student newspaper club of which I had recently been made a member—also looked up to him as a sort of deity.

Travers informed me reverentially that Brisbane was so busy he always carried his stenographer with him, even when he rode to the Hill in an auto ... dictating an editorial as he drove along.

"A great man ... a very great man."

I won merit with Travers by reciting an incident of my factory life. Every afternoon the men in my father's department would bring in Brisbane's latest editorial to me ... and listen to me as I read it aloud. To have the common man buy a newspaper for its editorials—that was a triumph.

And Brisbane's editorials frequently touched on matters that the mob are supposed not to be interested in ... stories of the lives of poets, philosophers, statesmen....

One of the men who could barely read ... who ran his fingers along the lines as he read, asked me—

"Who was this guy SO-krats?"

It was an editorial on Socrates and his life and death that brought forth the enquiry ... after I had imparted to him what information I possessed:

"Where can I find more about him, and about that pal of his, Plato?"

* * * * *

I was hanging on to my comfortable room at the Y.M.C.A. by bluff. I had not let on to the secretary that my Belton subsidy had stopped. Instead, I affected to be concerned about its delay. But I did this, not to be dishonest, but to gain time ... I was attempting to write tramp stories, after the manner of London, and expected to have one of them accepted soon, though none ever were....

Decker, the student-proprietor of the restaurant where I ate every day, was more astute.

"Now look here, Gregory, you just can't run your bill up any higher."

I already owed him fifteen dollars.

I compounded with him by handing him over my Illustrated History of English Literature. It was like tearing flesh from my side to part with these volumes.

And now I had no more credit at the Y.M.C.A.

And I went back to Frank Randall, to apply again for my old room over his shop. He was using it now to store old stoves in. But he moved them out.

With a sense of despair, compensated by a feeling of sacrifice for my poetry, I found myself once more back over the tinshop, the hammers sounding and crashing below.

Old Blore, the cancer doctor, lived in a room in the front. All day long he sat drinking rum and sugar ... and shipping out his cancer cure, a white mixture like powdered sugar. Whether it did any good or not, he believed in it himself....

I have not written about him before ... there are so many odd characters that I came in contact with that I have not written about ... for this book is about myself....

But old Blore ... he came waddling back to me, drunk, as usual, on his rum and sugar.

"Welcome back, Johnnie ... come on, you and Frank, into my room ... we've got to celebrate your return."

Frank and I set down the stove we were moving, dusted our hands off, and followed.

"But I won't drink any of your rum, Ed! It's got too much of a kick."

"—nonsense ... good Jamaica rum never hurt nobody."

We drank several rounds of rum and water, with sugar. And we jocosely joined together in singing the cancer doctor's favourite hymn—"We're drifting down the stream of time, we haven't got long to stay."

Then Frank and Ed. retailed to me the practical jokes they had played on each other since I had been gone from among them ... on big Sam, the chocolate-coloured shoemaker who had his shop next door ... and an obscene one on a half-wit named Elmer, who was one of Frank's helpers ... that, though it was pretty raw, made me choke and gasp with merriment ... and they told me how, one night, they had wired the iron roof in the back, so that about ten cats that were mewling and quarrelling there, received a severe electric shock ... how funny and surprised they'd acted.

* * * * *

Most serviceably a check from the National Magazine came, for twenty-five dollars ... I had sold them a prophetic poem on airships. The check ameliorated my condition. I saw my way clear to a few weeks more of regular eating.

* * * * *

Then, on top of that, one day a telegram came....

"Am on my way West. Will stop off visit you at Laurel—Penton."

* * * * *

Travers rushed the story to the Kansas City Star.

"KANSAS POET HONOURED ———————————— AUTHOR OF 'SLAUGHTER HOUSE' TO VISIT HIM"

I waited in a fever of eagerness and impatience for the arrival of this man whom I idealised and looked on as a great man ... the man who had written the Les Miserables of the American workingman.

* * * * *

Harry Varden, editor of the Cry for Right, had been to Laurel a week previously, to address a socialist local, and I had looked him up, at the house of the "comrade" where he was passing the night. The comrade sent me up to Varden's room, where I found the latter just getting out of bed. I shall always think of him in his proletarian grey woollen underdrawers and undershirt. In which he had evidently slept. He had the bed-habits of the masses. And the room was stale with bad air; like the masses, he, too, slept with windows shut.

Varden's monthly magazine The World to Be, had occasionally printed a poem of mine ... and I was paid five dollars for each poem.

Varden was a frail, jolly little chap, absolutely fearless and alert and possessed of a keen sense of humour which he could turn, on occasion, even against himself.

I breakfasted with him. He had good table manners, but, from time to time, he forgot himself and smacked his lips keenly. And the egg dripped on his chin as he flashed a humorous incident that had happened to him on one of his lecture trips....

After breakfast he and I took a long walk together ... we began speaking of Penton Baxter ... I spoke in high praise of the great novelist ... reverently and with awe.

"Yes, yes," Varden assented, "Penton is all you say, but he has no sense of humour ... and he takes himself and his work as seriously as if the destiny of the human race depended on it ... which is getting in a bad way, for a reformer, you know—gives a chap's enemies and antagonists so many good openings....

"When Penton was writing The Slaughter House and we were running it serially, his protagonist, Jarl—it seemed he didn't know how to dispose of him ... and the book was running on and on interminably.... I wired him 'for God's sake kill Jarl.' ...

"Baxter took my telegram much to heart ... was deeply aggrieved I afterward learned ... the dear boy ... he did 'kill Jarl' finally ... and absent-mindedly brought him to life again, later on in his book."

And Harry Varden laughed excitedly like a boy, and he leaned sideways and smote his half-bent, sharp, skinny knee with his left hand. I could perceive that that was a grotesque platform gesture of his, when he drove a comic point home.

* * * * *

I was waiting at the station ... where I had shaken hands with Bob Fitzsimmons, and had seen Emma Silverman off....

Penton Baxter was due on the eleven o'clock train from Kansas City.

I surely must be on the road to becoming somebody, with all these famous people taking such an interest in me. I remembered Emerson's dictum about waiting in one's own doorway long enough, and all the world would come by.

Was I to be disappointed? It did not seem credible that the great man would make a special stop-off on his way to the coast, just to pay me a visit.

One after another the passengers stepped down and walked and rode away. Then a little, boyish-looking man ... smooth-faced, bright-complexioned, jumped down, wavered toward me, dropping his baggage ... extended his hand ... both hands ... smiling with his eyes, that possessed long lashes like a girl's.

"Are you Johnnie Gregory?"

"Penton Baxter?" I asked reverently. He smiled in response and drew my arm through his.

"This is great, this is certainly great," he remarked, in a high voice, "and I'm more than glad that I stopped off to see you."

He expanded in the sun of my youthful hero-worship.

"Where's the best hotel in town?"

"The Bellman House ... but I've arranged with the Sig-Kappas to put you up."

"Are you a fraternity man?"

"No—a barb."

"I'd rather go to the hotel you named ... but thank the boys for me."

I contended with Penton Baxter for the privilege of carrying his two grips. They were so heavy that they dragged my shoulders down, but, with an effort, I threw my chest out, and walked, straight and proud, beside him.

As we walked he questioned and questioned. He had the history of Laurel University, the story of my life, out of me, almost, by the time we had covered the ten blocks to the hotel.

"Penton Baxter!" I whispered in a low voice to the proprietor, who, as he stood behind the desk, dipped the pen with a flourish, and shoved the open register toward his distinguished guest.

* * * * *

Travers, of course, was the first to see the great novelist. He wired an interview to the Star, and wrote a story for the Laurel Globe and the Laurelian.

Baxter said he would stay over for two days ... that he didn't want to do much beside seeing me ... that he would place himself entirely in my hands. I was beside myself with happy pride.

"This is a glorious country. You must take me for a long walk this afternoon. I want to tramp away out to that purple bluff toward the South East."

"We call it Azure Mound."

"Has it any historical interest?"

"—don't know! It might have. Richard Realf, the poet, camped out about here, on the heights with his men, during the Quantrell Raid, And there are one or two old settlers in Laurel who were members of John Brown's company."

Baxter was a good walker. He made me think of Shelley as he traipsed along, indefatigably talking away, his voice high-pitched and shrill ... unburdening his mind of all his store of ideas....

His head was much too large for his body ... a strong head ... strong Roman nose ... decisive chin, but with too deep a cleft in it. His mouth was loose and cruel—like mine. His face was as smooth as a boy's or woman's ... on each cheek a patch here and there of hair, like the hair on an old maid's face.

More than a year later his wife confided to me that "Pennie," as she dubbed him affectionately, could not grow a beard ... and she laughed at his solemnly shaving once a week, as a matter of ritual, anyhow....

Each of us went with bent knees as we walked, as if wading against a rising tide of invisible opposition.

I discoursed of a new religion—a non-ascetic one based on the individual's spiritual duty to enjoy life—that I meditated inaugurating as soon as I left college. He advised me to wait till I was at least Christ's age when he began his public ministry, thirty-five or six. His face lit with frolic....

Then, in rapid transition, he soberly discoursed on the religion he himself had in mind ... instinctively I knew it would not do to make sport of his dreams, as he had of mine.

Harry Varden was right. Where he himself was involved in the slightest, Baxter absolutely had no sense of humour.

Baxter told me of the great men he had met on intimate terms, in the wider world of life and letters I had not yet attained to ... of Roosevelt, who invited him to dinner at the White House ... and of how, at that dinner attended by many prominent men ... by several Senators ... Roosevelt had unlimbered his guns of attack on many men in public office.... "Senator So-and-so was the biggest crook in American public life.... Senator Thing-gumbob was the most sinister force American politics had ever seen ... belonged to the Steel Trust from his shoes to his hat...."

"Suppose, Mr. President," Baxter had put to him, at the same time expressing his amazement at the president's open manner of speech before men he had never even met before ... men perhaps of antagonistic shades of opinion, "suppose I should go out from here and give to the newspapers the things you have just said! How would you protect, defend yourself?"

"Young man, if you did—as you won't—" smashed Roosevelt, with his characteristic of clenched right fist brought down in the open palm of the left hand—"if you did—I'd simply brand you as a liar ... and shame you before the world."

"And so it was that Roosevelt expressed himself freely ... and at the same time protected himself."

* * * * *

We stood on the top of Azure Mound. Baxter was puffing heavily, for it had been a hard climb.

At our feet extended a panorama of what seemed like a whole State.

The wide-spread fields of wheat, of corn, exalted us.

"God, what a glorious country!... no wonder Walt loved America ... in spite of the abuses capital has perpetrated in it."

"Walt Mason?" I enquired, mischievously....

"No," he responded, seriously, "Walt Whitman."

"But our poet laureate to-day is Walt Mason ... and our State philosopher, the sage of Potato Hill, Ed Howe, is an honest-to-God stand-patter ... that's Kansas to-day for you, in spite of her wide, scenic vistas....

"Nevertheless," I went on, "Kansas does develop marvellous people ... we have Carrie Nation—"

"And Johnnie Gregory!" put in Baxter.

"I don't want just to belong to Kansas."

It was I who was humourless now, "I'm sick of its corn-fed bourgeois ideals ... I want to belong to the world—as—you do!"

We trudged back to town.

"What a site for a university!... the men who put those buildings up there on the Hill must have dreamed greatly ... look at the sun!... the buildings are transfigured into a fairy city!"

* * * * *

My office as social manager for Baxter during his stay I conducted badly. I was so excited and flattered by the visit of one whom I considered one of the first geniuses of the world, that I hardly knew what I was doing. I listened to all he said as if an oracle spoke.

I asked him if he would like to meet some of the professors on the Hill.... I hurriedly gathered together a small group of them and Baxter gave a talk to them in one of the unoccupied recitation rooms. Nor did he fail in telling them that in me Kansas had a great poet in the making ... the professors who were not invited to my hasty reception considered themselves slighted.

When I saw Baxter off at the station we were calling each other by our first names.

"Good-bye, Johnnie!"

"Good-bye, Penton!"

"Don't fail to visit me at Warriors' River, this fall, if you can do so conveniently."

I assured him that I would not fail.

For I had spoken with him of my determination to ship on the Great Lakes for a few months, to see if I couldn't garner some poetic material for my poems of modern life that I was writing for the National Magazine.

"My wife and I will be at Warriors' River till late in the fall. We're staying at Stephen Barton's Health Home. Barton is a good friend of mine.... I am helping him out, since he left New Jersey, where he was forced, by a series of petty prosecutions, to give up Perfection City.... My wife will be glad to see you ... she knows your poetry already."

* * * * *

The weather was warm again. My next to my last college year was drawing to a close. Not that I was a graduate ... my course was a special one, and I had not followed even that closely.

"If you'll graduate," Jarvis Alexander Mackworth urged me, joking in the Kansas fashion, "I will present you with a great bouquet of beauty roses.... I'd like to see you vindicate Langworth's and my judgment of you. For you have many, many professors and people on the Hill who don't believe in you, and, frankly,—say it was a mistake ever to have let you in."

Mackworth was one of the regents of the school.

"In fact, once one of the professors rose, at a meeting, ably reinforced by several others, to complain that you were actually crazy, and a detriment to the school."

"And what did you say, Mr. Mackworth, didn't you defend me?"

"Yes, God pity me, I did," he jested. "I remembered how I was asked to quit here, too. In the days when General Fred Furniss was also looked on as an unruly, rather undesirable member of the student body ... we were classmates....

"I replied that no doubt you were crazy, you starry young tramp, you!... but that I wished some of the professors shared a little of your virus ... it might make them more alive and interesting."

Again I was absolutely starvation-ridden. Several tramp-poems that I sold to Everybody's kept me literally in bread and cheese for a month. I was still madly in love with Vanna at long distance.

There came an opportunity for me to make a few dollars and to show off before her, at the same time.

The Copperwell Street Show came to town. They lined the main street with booths, and outside of town, in a large pasture, circus tents were pitched, in which the usual one-ringed circus was to be shown ... and they had six lions in a cage ... advertised as Nubian lions, the largest and fiercest of their kind ... their trainer never going in among them except at peril of his life. A gold medal was offered to anyone who would go in among the lions alone, and make a speech to the audience from the inside of the cage.

I negotiated with the management, but asked for the medal's equivalent in money. I was offered twenty-five dollars if I would go in, and repeat my speech, each one of the three nights the show would be held.

I was to go in for the first time that very night ... to clinch my lagging resolution, the story was printed in the local papers....

"JOHN GREGORY TIRED OF LIFE ———————————— KANSAS POET TO TALK AMONG LIONS,"

Jack Travers was at his facetious best.

Considering myself heroic, and thinking with inner joy how Vanna Andrews would be there, I spent the day in committing to memory the salient points on the nature and habits of lions, from the Encyclopedia Britannica....

People looked at me both with amusement and admiring amazement as they saw me about, late that afternoon....

"Now tell me the honest truth about the lions," I asked of the trainer.

"They're a pretty bad lot."

"Come on. I've made up my mind to go in, and I'm not afraid."

"—though lions are not as bad as leopards and tigers ... there's no telling when they might jump you ... there's only one chance in a thousand that they will ... but you may bring one up from being a cub ... and, one morning, because of something you can't read in its animal mind—it not liking its breakfast or something—it may jump you, give one crunch, and snuff you out like a candle ... it's that chance that you take that makes it seem brave."

"Thanks, I'll take the chance."

"Are you sure you'll have enough command of yourself to make a speech?"

"—Certain ... I've committed to memory almost all the Encyclopedia Britannica article on lions ... I'm going to give them that...."

* * * * *

"Gregory! Gregory!" the crowd was calling, half in derisive jocularity, half in uneasy admiration....

The trainer shunted me into the cage, after seating his lions in a half-moon on their tubs.

"Quick! Step in! We'll be on the outside ready with hot irons in case anything goes wrong!"

I didn't know whether the trainer was jesting or serious.

"Don't think of them at all. They'll sit still ... you can turn your back to them and face the audience. It will be safe. Only don't make any unexpected, quick motions."

I was in among them. The door clanged behind me.

Nobody jeered now. All was filled with an expectant hush.

Then, as if strange and a-far from myself, I stepped easily into the very centre of the half moon of squatting beasts, and made my speech ... at the end, there was hardly any applause till I was safely out of the cage ... Then there was a tumult. Shouts, cat-calls, whoops, and a great noise of hearty hand-clapping.

I stood beside the ropes as the people of Laurel surged by, many of them shaking me by the hand ... Vanna came by, with the big football player with her, bulking behind her slight loveliness ... lightly she put a tiny, gloved hand in mine ... a glove neatly mended at the fingers ... congratulating me, half with feeling, half with amusement....

"That was reckless and brave, Mr. Gregory."

I was speechless with frightened delight over her words, and the pressure of her hand.

I turned to the trainer before I went to my room over the tin-shop.

"You say the leopards are most dangerous?"

"Yes."

"For twenty-five dollars a night I will go in with them, alone, and run them around with a whip." As I proposed this, in the background of my consciousness was the conviction that by so doing I could win Vanna's love....

"No ... the leopards are too uncertain."

* * * * *

The papers were full of my deed. And I was not made fun of, but commended. And it was announced (for advertising purposes only, of course) that the management of the show had approached me with an offer to travel as a trainer of wild animals.

The second night I was rather blase. I shook my finger playfully in the face of one of the seated lions ... to have a sensation of a thousand prickles running sharp through each pore, when the lion responded with an open, crimson-mouthed, yellow-fanged snarl; I smelt the carrion fetor of his breath. I stepped back rather quickly. All the animals grew restless and furtive. Little greenish-amber gleams lit and flickered in their eyes.

I pulled myself together. Deliberately I turned my back on them.

"—So you see plainly, ladies and gentlemen, that a lion is, after all, a much misrepresented, gentle beast."

The trainer was piqued when I walked out, that night.

"I don't want you to tell the people that my lions are harmless and gentle ... if you do that to-morrow night, I'll see to it that you get the medal, and not the money."

The afternoon of the following day, while the girl who trained the leopards was in the cage of the latter, they jumped on her, and tore her back with their claws. Dripping with blood, she whipped them back, inch by inch, into their living-cage, that led by a small door into the big one used for exhibitions. A shiver ran through me at the news of the girl's mishap. I was glad they had not taken me up as regards the leopards. And my being among the lions now also seemed less of a joke. At least, that last night, I felt it not to be, I delivered a constrained discourse and only breathed freely when outside their cage.

* * * * *

And in a few weeks my unique and single glory was snatched from me. The show had moved to Salina, and a barber in that town had shaved their keeper in the cage, while the lions sat around.

* * * * *

Before leaving for my projected summer as worker on the boats of the Great Lakes, I snatched at a passing adventure: the Kansas City Post had me walk from Laurel to Kansas City with the famous walker, Weston.

The man was going across the continent a-foot. When he saw I was sticking the fifty miles or so with him, he became friendly and talked with me of the athletes of former days ... the great runners, walkers, fighters, oarsmen ... and he knew intimately also many well known journalists and literary men of whom he discoursed.

Time and again, like a bicycle pedalled too slow, he stepped awry on so small an obstacle as a cinder, and toppled over on his face like an automaton running down.

"No, no! Don't touch me. I must get up myself ... that's not in the game ..." his rising was a hard, slow effort ... he regained his feet with the aid of his metal-tipped cane....

"Keep back! Keep back!" to the people, gangs of curious boys mostly, who followed close on his heels. And he poked backwards with the sharp metallic point of the stick....

"People follow close on me, stupid, like donkeys. If I didn't keep that point swinging back, when I slacked my pace or stopped they would walk right up on me...."

* * * * *

Dr. Percival Hammond, managing editor of the New York Independent. the first magazine to print my poems, came to town ... to lecture on his favourite topic of international peace.

It occurred to me strongly that I ought to afford him some witness of my gratitude for what his magazine had done for me.

Though broke, I borrowed ten dollars from the owner of a lunch counter where I ate.

"I want to give a dinner to Dr. Hammond ... his magazine has helped me as a poet ... it is obvious that I can't give the dinner at your lunch counter."

Ten dollars was all the lunchcounter man would lend me.

But Walsh Summers of the Bellman House said I could give a luncheon in honour of Hammond at fifty cents a plate ... he would allot me two tables ... and a separate room ... and I could invite nineteen professors ... and he would throw in two extras for Jack Travers and myself.

I gave the lunch, inviting the professors I liked best.

After dessert and a few speeches I told them how I had borrowed the money. Hammond privately tried to pay me back out of his own pocket, but I wouldn't let him.

* * * * *

I asked Hammond if he knew Penton Baxter.

"Yes; we printed his first article, you know ... just as we gave you your start....

"Baxter is the most remarkable combination of genius and jackass I have ever run into. But don't ever tell him that I said that. He has no sense of humour ... everything is of equal import to him ... his toothache is as tragic as all the abuses of the capitalist system."

* * * * *

On the way to the Great Lakes there are several people I must stop and see, and show myself to.

I stop at Topeka and visit Dad Rother ... a columnist on a newspaper there, of more than local fame ... an obviously honest-to-God bachelor ... he is afflicted with dandruff and his hair is almost gone. He shows me photographs of Mackworth and of Uncle Bill Struthers, each autographed with accompanying homely sentiment.

I catch myself pretending an interest in Rother's column, but really actuated by a desire to plant myself in his mind, and to have a notice in his paper about me ... anything that Dad Rother has in his column is copied in all the Kansas papers.

* * * * *

I drop in at a Leavenworth newspaper office, ostensibly to borrow the use of a typewriter.

But the stick or so put in the paper about my passing through Leavenworth pleases me.

General Fred Furniss is stationed at Fort Leavenworth. I must visit him.

* * * * *

General Furniss walked in rapidly as if executing a military manoevour, both hands held forth in welcome. He was "Napoleonic" in size, and, also like Napoleon, he carried too much belly in front of him. He wore a closely curling salt-and-pepper beard....

He commented on my "military carriage"—asked me if I had ever gone to a military academy....

I yielded to an instinct for deprecative horse-play, one of my worst faults, begot of an inferiority-complex.

"No, I've never gone to a military academy, but I've had a hole in the seat of my pants so generally, and I have had to walk erect so much to keep my coat tail well down to hide it, that that is where I acquired my military carriage."

The general's eyes twinkled.

"Take a chair. I have heard of you, Mr. Gregory ... I have watched your work, too. Roosevelt knows about it ... has spoken of it to me ... has remarked: 'there's a young fellow—your poet-chap in Kansas—that will be worth watching ... why is it, Fred, that every man of any talent whatever in Kansas, instantly gets the eye of the nation?... we're always expecting something big from William Allen White's State'."

* * * * *

A week or so of work for a Polish-Catholic farmer ... who locked me out of his house, when he and his family went to mass the one Sunday I was with him. He asked me if I wanted a book to read. As the only book he possessed was Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ, I took it, and learned Christian humility, reading it, in the orchard. Surely this farmer was a practical Christian. He believed in his fellow man and at the same time gave him no opportunity to abuse his faith in him....

* * * * *

It was pleasant, this working for from a few days to a week, then sauntering on ... putting up at cheap little country hotels overnight. I liked it better than tramping....

I pitched hay, I loaded lumber, I dug, I planted, I reaped.

In lower Minnesota a Swedish emigrant farmer hired me to help him with his hay crop. He and I and his lanky son, Julius ... just coming out of adolescence ... we worked away from sun-up till moon-rise....

The first day I congratulated myself for working for that particular farmer. The meat at table was abundant and fresh.

But before my two weeks were up I had grown weary of the diet. They had killed a cow ... and cow-meat was what I found set before me morning, noon, and night,—every day. I complained about it to Julius ... "when we kill a cow ain't we got to eat it?" he replied.

Every afternoon we participated in a pleasant Swedish custom. The two women of the household, the mother and grandmother, with blue cloth rolled about their head for headgear, brought us coffee and cake a-field....

"Aeftermittagscaffee," they called it.

It refreshed us; we worked on after that till late supper by lamp, driving back to the house by moonlight.

* * * * *

At Duluth I found that a strike prevailed on the Lakes. I was held in doubt whether I ought to sail, for I would have to do so as strike-breaker, which was against my radical code ... but, then, I had come over-land all the way from Laurel, to voyage the Great Lakes for the poetry to be found there ... and I must put my muse above such things as strikes.

I signed on, on a big ore boat, as porter....

That means, as third cook; my task the washing and scouring of greasy pots, pans, and dishes ... and waiting on the firemen and deckhands at meals.

The James Eads Howe took on a cargo of rust-coloured iron ore at Twin Harbours ... the gigantic machinery grided and crashed all night, pouring the ore into the hold, to the dazzling flare of electric lights....

Here for the first time I conceived myself to be caught in the great industrial turmoil. If I were to derive song from this, it would be song for giants, or rather, for machines that had grown to gigantic proportions from the insect world ... diminutive men made parts of their anatomy as they swung levers and operated cranes....

We kicked outward on the long drop down Lake Superior, the largest of the five Great Lakes. It was like an inland ocean. The water of it is always so cold that, when a ship is wrecked there, good swimmers who might otherwise keep up till rescued, often perish of the cold....

Day and night the horizon was smoky-blue with forest fires ... one afternoon our deck was covered with birds that had flown out over the water to escape the flames....

And once we saw lifted in the sky three steamboats sailing upside down, a mirage ... and, once, a gleaming city in the clouds, that hung there spectrally for about five minutes, then imperceptibly faded out....

"That's a reflection of some real city," explained the tall Canadian-Scotch cook ... "once I recognised Quebec hanging in the sky ...—thought I even saw people walking and traffic moving."

Half-way across to the Soo Canal we ran into my first lake-storm.

"The sailor on the Great Lakes has a harder time than the ocean sailor. He can't make his ship run before a storm. He's got to look out for land on every side."

Right over my bunk where I slept, ceaselessly turned and turned the propeller shaft. The noise and roar of the engines was ever in my ears, and the peculiar ocean-like noise of the stokehold ... and the metallic clang of coal as it shot from shovels....

The night of the storm the crashing of the water and the whistling impact of wave-weighted winds kept me awake.

I jumped into my clothes and went into the fire-room. Hardly able to keep their feet, the firemen toiled away, scattering shovels-full of coal evenly over the fires, wielding their slice bars ... greeting with oaths and comic curses the awkward coal passer who spilled with his laden wheelbarrow into the slightly lower pit where they stood.

I quit the James Eads Howe at Ashtabula, after several round trips in her, the length of the Lakes.

I freighted it to Chicago, where I shipped, again as porter, on a package freighter.

* * * * *

The captain of the package freighter Overland should have been anything but a captain. He was a tall, flabby, dough-faced man, as timid as a child just out of the nursery.

We had taken on, as one of our firemen, a Canuck, who, from the first, boasted that he was a "bad man"....

He intimidated the cook right off. He punched in a glass partition to emphasise a filthy remark he had made to the head engineer. He went after me, to bully and domineer me, next.

It looked as if we were in for a hard voyage to the Georgian Bay.

The Canuck, at the very first meal, terrorised the crew that sat down with him. I looked him over carefully, and realised that something must be done.

He flung a filthy and gratuitous expression my way. Silently I stepped back from the mess room, untied my apron, and meant to go in and try to face him down. But at that juncture, my courage failed me, and instead of inviting the rough-neck out on deck, as I had tried to force myself to do, I hurried to the captain's cabin.

The captain said, "Come in!" to my knock. He was sitting, of all things, in dirty pajamas, at a desk ... though it was mid-day ... his flabby, grey-white belly exuded over his tight pajama waist-string ... the jacket of the pajamas hung open, with all but one button off.

I complained to the captain of the bully—repeated how he had bellowed at me to tell the unmentionable skipper he would receive his bumps bloody well, too, if the latter did not stick to his own part of the ship.

I saw fright in the captain's face....

"It's up to the chief engineer."

"Either that fellow goes off this ship or I do. You'll have to hire another third cook."

The boat was sailing in an hour.

I walked back for my few effects. But, on the way back, I took hold of myself and determined to stick by my guns. I made up my mind that I would not leave the boat, and that, at the first hostile move of the bully I would oppose him—besides, what had the fellow done, so far, besides chucking a bluff?

My opportunity to live up to my resolve came at mess for supper. There was a smoking platter of cabbage set before the boys.

"What the hell! Who wants to eat bloody cabbage."

And snatching up a handful of the dripping, greasy vegetable, he was about to fling it into the face of one of the men opposite, when, without giving myself a chance to hesitate, I stepped up quickly and grabbed the "bad man's" wrist. The cabbage went high and spattered all over the opposite wall.

The bully glared like an enraged bull at me.

"I'll—"

Quaking in my boots, I made my eyes glare level with his.

"Listen to me, bo," I bluffed, "I ain't much on guff, and I don't want specially to fight ... but I'm waiter in this mess room and you don't pull anything like this here, unless you do it over my dead body."

"That's just what I will do ... I'll—I'll—" and the chap, pale with what seemed insane rage, started to his feet.

"Ah, sit down!" I commanded, marvelling at my nerve, and pushing him violently by the shoulders back on the bench ... then, deliberately, I turned my back, and walked away, expecting any moment to have him on me like a clawing wild cat.

With seeming calm and nonchalance I made the kitchen. With a semblance of outward serenity I picked up a rag and returned to wipe off the wall. I was vastly relieved to find that the bluff had worked.

The Canuck was finishing his meal in silence.

From that moment till the end of the voyage he was as quiet and Unobtrusive as anyone could wish him to be....

* * * * *

I have a curious habit of often waking up in the night from deep slumber, and breaking into laughter over some funny incident or other that has happened to me a long time ago ... I have chuckled over this incident many times ... if that bully only knew how terrorised he really had me!...

* * * * *

It is impossible to describe the Georgian Bay and the beauty of its thousands of islands ... as we steamed through them in the dawn, they loomed about us through sun-golden violet mists.... Here as small as the chine of some swimming animal, there large enough for a small forest of trees to grow upon them....

* * * * *

Another storm ... on Lake Huron ... a fair-sized one.

I was walking along the deck, just after dawn, the waves riding and running and shattering aboard. I carried the dinner bell, was ringing it for breakfast ... when the greatest wave I have ever seen on the Lakes came running, high-crested, toward the boat,—that seemed to know what was happening, for it rose to meet it, like a sentient being....

The wave smashed ... hit the galley and washed over the top of it, catching me in a cataract as I hugged close. I was driven hard against the taut cable wire that made our only railing. For a moment I thought the water reaching up from over-side as the vessel lurched would clutch me and suck me down.

A close and breathless call. A rending, splintering sound told me damage had been done. I looked toward the captain's cabin ... and laughed heartily, for all my discomfort and dangerous escape ... for the whole side of the cabin had been stove in,—and, terrified, his eyes sticking out, in his dirty underclothes the captain had been hurtled forth, his face still stupid from sleep though full of fear.

I rushed up to him. His drawers sagged pitiably with wet.

"A close shave, sir!" I remarked.

When I brought him his breakfast he was still trembling.

* * * * *

I left the package freighter Overland. It was almost time for the new school year. But Warriors' River lay in my way back to Laurel, and I determined to stop off and pay a visit to Baxter, at Barton's Health Home....

* * * * *

I was disappointed with my summer. In terms of poetic output. I had written only three or four poems dealing with life on the Lakes, and these were barely publishable in the National Magazine. I realise now that poetic material is not to be collected as a hunter goes gunning for game. It cannot be deliberately sought and found. It must just happen.

Yet all the things that I had seen and been through, I knew, would live in my mind till they were ready of themselves to get birth in words. I knew that I had not lost a single dawn nor one night of ample moon. And there drifted back into my remembrance that night when the Italian coal-passer had come to my bunk and wakened me, that I might come forth with him and observe a certain wonderful cloud-effect about the full, just-risen moon, over Huron....

I had cursed at him, thought he was trying to make a monkey of me ... for I had dropped on deck a letter to me from Lephil of the National, and so the crew had learned that I was a poet among them.

But I was not being spoofed ... actual tears of surprise and chagrin came into the coal-passer's eyes. Then I had been ashamed of myself ...

"Of course I'll go on deck ... mighty fine of you to wake me!" I slid into my pants and went up the ladder—

To envisage, rapturous, a great, flaming globe of shadowy silver ... and across it, in a single straight ebony bar, one band of jet-black cloud ... and the water, from us to the apparition of beauty, danced, dappled, with an ecstasy of quivering silver....

I have met many a man in my wanderings, simple and silent, who felt beauty like a poet or an artist, without the poet's or artist's gifts of expression,—with, on the contrary, a queer shame that he was so moved, a suspicion that, somehow, it was not manly to be moved by a sunrise or sunset.

* * * * *

I found Penton Baxter, his wife Hildreth, and their child, Dan, living in two tents, among a grove of trees, near the main building of the Health Home. These two tents had, of course, board floors, and there was a woman who kept them in condition ... and there was a rack for towels, and hot water was supplied by pipes from a nearby building. I think the tents were even wired for electric light.

Baxter welcomed me. But I took a room for a week in town, though he urged me to stay with him. But when I had the means I liked better to be independent. I calculated living a week in Warriors' River for ten or twelve dollars. That would leave me thirty dollars over, from what I had earned while working on the Overland.

Then, back to the university for my last year of leisurely study and reading, in the face of the desolate poverty that would have defeated many another man, but to which I was used as a customary condition. After that—Paris or London, or both! Kansas was growing too small for me.

* * * * *

I have mentioned that Baxter had a head too large for his body. Daniel, his son, slight and frail and barely eight years of age, possessed the same characteristic....

I footed it out to Baxter's tents, faithfully as to a shrine, each afternoon. The mornings he and I both occupied in writing. He, on a novel which was the story of the love-life of his wife and himself, and of his literary struggles, called Love's Forthfaring; I, on my abortive songs of the Great Lakes that all came forth still-born ... because I was yet under the vicious literary influence of the National Magazine, and was writing my verse, trying to be inspired by the concepts of middle-class morality ... or what was even worse, I was attempting to glorify the under-dog; who, if he were the demigod Socialists portray him, would by no means remain the under-dog.

* * * * *

I found Baxter more a-flame than ever for the utter reformation of mankind ... in the way they dressed ... stiff collars hurt the nervous system, pressing as they did, on the spine ... in the books they read ... he wished to start a library that would sell cheaply and bring all the world's great thought and poetry into factory, and every worker's home ... all conventional ideas of marriage and religion must go by the board and freedom in every respect be granted to men and women.

It was good to listen to this sincere, naive man, still young ... who would re-make life nearer to the beauty and harmony that Shelley also dreamed for mankind. I lived in a state of perpetual reverence toward Baxter. This man tried to live his ideals, as well as write about them.

In matters of diet I accepted Baxter's theories but, humanly, did not live up to them. He was a vegetarian.

Later I was to learn that he was to himself an experiment station. On his own person he directly and practically tried out each idea ... his wife was also a convertee, slightly reluctant, to his tests ... and his son, perforce. Baxter actually kept a vegetarian dog. "Even carnivorous animals thrive better on a vegetarian diet." But the dog was no corroboration of his theory. It lacked gloss and shine to its coat, and seldom barked.

One afternoon I came upon Dan, Baxter's son, puking in the bushes, not far from the tents.

"What's the matter, Dan," he turned to me, wan, and serious, and with a grown-up look on his face.

"Nothing! Only sometimes the warm milk father has me drink makes me throw up. I'm on a milk diet, you know."

"Does your father know that you can't keep the milk down?"

"Mostly it does stay down ... I guess father's all right," he defended, "maybe the diet will do me good."

"Do you ever get a beefsteak?"

"Father says meat is no good ... maybe he's right about killing animals. He says it wouldn't be half so bad if everyone killed their own meat, instead of making brutes out of men who do the killing for them ... but it is kind of hard on the dog, though," and the little fellow laughed.