"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 à 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....