Chapter XII: Part 12

I trudged townward, light-hearted ... a poem began to come to me before I had gone a mile ... at intervals I sat down and wrote a few lines....

That fall the _National Magazine_ printed _The Threshers_ and _The Harvest_ and _The Cook-Shack_, three poems, the fruit of that work. All three written on the road as I walked back to town ... and all three didactic and ridiculous in their praise of the worker.

* * * * *

Frank Randall, tinsmith and plumber, who ran his shop on the main street, rented me a back room over his store, for two dollars a week. It had been occupied by big Sam, the negro shoemaker, and it was neither in order, nor did it smell very sweet. But I cleaned and aired it, and sprinkled disinfectant about that I had bought at the drug store.

Then I fetched my books down from Langworth's in a wheelbarrow, and I set them up in several neat rows.

I lay back on my cot and looked at them in satisfaction and happiness. I had enough for food and lodging for nearly three months, if I cooked for myself. Two dollars a week for food and two for rent, and I'd do my own washing ... say five a week at the most! that would mean twelve weeks of doing nothing but reading and writing and studying.

The first day of my sojourn over the tinsmith's shop, Sunday, I drew down from the shelf my Heinrich Heine ... in German ... one of the tasks I set myself, during that three months, was the making an intensive study of just how Heine had "swung" the lyric form to such conciseness, such effectiveness of epigrammatic expression.

I opened the _Buch der Lieder_ at the poem in his preface--the song of the sphinx in the enchanted wood ... and how it clutched the seeker, the poet, to its monstrous but voluptuous woman's breasts as it ravished his soul with kisses. And the nightingale was singing....

"O, shoene Sphinx, O loese mir
Das Raetsel, das wunderbare!
Ich hab' darueber nachgedacht
Schon manche tausand Yahre."

* * * * *

Monday morning ... by six or seven o'clock a rustling below, in the shop, by eight, the day's work in full blast ... a terrific pounding and hammering on sheets of tin and pieces of pipe. The uproar threw my mind off my poetry.

I went down to speak with Randall about it....

"Frank, I can't stand this, I must leave."

"Nonsense; stay; you'll get used to it."

"No, I must go if the noise keeps up continually like this."

"Well, it won't ... we have a special job to finish ... tin-roofing ... but if you want a place to stay where it is quiet, I have a camp, not far out, on the Ossawatomie, where I go for week-ends...."

"Where is it? That would be fine. I'd like to stay there."

"You know where old Farmer Brown lives, by the abandoned church, just outside of Perthville?"

"Yes. That's seven miles out on the Osageville road."

"Take the first turn to the right from his house, going west. It's an unused bye-road and it runs plumb into my cabin. There's a frying pan there ... and some flour ... and bacon ... tell you what ... it's been broken into several times. I'll consider it worth while if you go and live there, and I get no rent from you for it nor the room upstairs ... you'll be alone, God knows--excepting Saturdays and Sundays."

* * * * *

I packed my Heine in a bundle ... with my Bible and my Josephus in the Greek, along with Whiston's English version ... and I included a bundle of books on New Testament times that made me groan under their weight. For I planned to begin a four-act play on Judas, and must study for writing that, as well as learn the "how" of the lyric....

The stupendousness of the silence of absolute solitude! At first the thoughts run on with a tangle and jangle, a turmoil almost of madness ... then they quiet down into the peace that only a hermitage gives and the objects of life are seen in their true relativity and perspective.

My diet was one of sow-belly, bread, and coffee, and what fish I caught in the sluggish, muddy stream....

Saturday, toward sunset, I heard a whooping in the woods. It was Randall coming with a few friends for his week-end, as he had warned. With him, his wild brother, Jack; and Bill, his assistant plumber and man-about-shop.

The drinking had begun before they were in sight of the shack. And it was kept up till late Sunday night ... around a big fire in a cleared space they sang and gambled and drank.

Randall served great hilarity to the party by trying to breed his gelded horse to his mare ... the mare kicked and squealed, indignant at the cheat, looking back, flattening her ears, and showing the vicious whites of her eyes. Several times the infuriated beast's heels whished an inch or so from Randall's head, as he forced the gelding to advance and mount. We rolled on the grass, laughing ... myself included.

Then all stripped to the buff for a swim in the stream ... a treacherous place where the bottom was at times but two or three feet from the surface, and the mud, soft and semi-liquid for five feet more. And there were snags, and broken beer and whiskey bottles all over the bottom where it was decent and gravelly.

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.