* * * * *

I pinned up a sign on the bulletin board in the hall, in rhyme, announcing, that, that afternoon, at four o’clock, John Gregory would hold an auction of his books of poetry.

* * * * *

My room was crowded with amused students.  I mounted the table, like an auctioneer, while they sat on my cot and on the floor, and crowded the door.

At first the boys jeered and pushed.  But when I started selling my copy of Byron and telling about his life, they fell into a quiet, and listened.  After I had made that talk, they clapped me.  Byron went for a dollar, fetching the largest price.  I sold my Shelley, my Blake, my Herrick, my Marvell, my Milton ... all....

My Keats I could not bring myself to sell.  I kept that like a treasure.  What I could not sell I gave away.

My entire capital was ten dollars ... one suit of clothes ... a change of underwear ... two shirts.  I discarded my trunk and crammed what little I owned into my battered suitcase.

That night, the story of my dismissal from school having travelled about from mouth to mouth, and the tale of my poets’ auction—­the boys cheered me, as I came into the dining hall—­cheered me partly affectionately, partly derisively.

* * * * *

In the morning mail I received a letter from the New York Independent, a weekly literary magazine.  Dr. Ward, the editor, informed me that I possessed genuine poetic promise, and he was taking two of the poems I had recently submitted to him, for publication in his magazine.

* * * * *

Like the vagrant I was, I considered myself indefinitely fixed, with that ten dollars.  I went to Boston ... hung about the library and the waterfront ... stayed in cheap lodging houses for a few days—­and found myself on the tramp again.

* * * * *

I freighted it to New York, where I landed, grimy and full of coal-dust.  And I sought out my uncle who lived in the Bronx.

I appeared, opportunely, around supper time.  I asked him if he was not glad to see me.  He grimaced a yes, but wished that I would stop tramping about and fit in, in life, somewhere....  He observed that my shirt was filthy and that I must take a bath immediately and put on a clean one of his.

In Boston I had ditched everything but the clothes I wore ... and my suit was wrecked with hard usage.

“Get work at anything,” advised my Uncle Jim, “and save up till you can rig yourself out new.  You’ll never accomplish anything looking the way you do.  Your editor at the Independent will not be impressed and think it romantic, if you go to see him the way you are ... ragged poets are out of date.”

* * * * *

At “Perfection City” I had made the acquaintance of a boy, whom, curiously enough, I have left out of that part of the narrative that has to deal with the Nature Colony.  He was a millionaire’s son:  his father, a friend of Barton’s, had sent him out to “Perfection City” with a tutor.  His name was Milton Saunders.  He was a fine, generous lad, but open as the weather to every influence ... especially to any which was not for his good.