And that was the only information I could get of these famous men from their milkman.

* * * * *

Sowerby kept pigs under the barn....  For economy’s sake the cows’ dung was shovelled down to them.  And over them the outhouse was also built, so that our human efforts might not be wasted....

* * * * *

One night, despite a hard day’s work, I could not sleep.  So I went out on the hillside to enjoy the moonlight.

On my way back to the attic I observed a light in the barn.  I stopped in to see who was there.  It was Sowerby, cleaning out the stable, to the plain disgust of the horses and cows.

I asked him if anything was the matter.  I learned that he had risen in the middle of the night and gone to work ... because that was his happiness, his only happiness.

* * * * *

Driven by an impulse of distaste for him and his house and market garden, I started to leave in secret.  What money was coming to me for my two weeks’ work I did not care about—­in the face of the curious satisfaction it would give me just to quit, and to have the old man call up to me and find me missing....

I heard him pottering back to his bedroom again....  I waited till he was quiet and back to sleep—­then I stole forth in the quiet moonlight near dawn.

It gave me a pleasure to vanish like smoke.  I thought of the time when I had that job plowing in Southern California; that time I had driven the horses to the further end of the field, and left them standing there under the shade of a tree and then made off, wishing to shout and sing for the sheer happiness of freedom from responsibility and regular work.

Each time I have made off that way, from a multitude of varying employments, it has not been, surely, to the detriment of my successive employers.  I have always decamped with wages still owing me.

* * * * *

I swung a scythe for a week for another Yankee farmer, on a marsh where the machine couldn’t be driven in—­which I was informed was King Phillip’s battle ground.

* * * * *

I visited the inn where Longfellow was supposed to have gotten his inspiration for Tales of a Wayside Inn.

I must see all the literary landmarks, even those where I considered the authors that had caused the places to be celebrated, as dull and third rate....

* * * * *

With gathering power in me grew my desire to attend college.  I would tramp, as I was doing, through the country, and end up at some western university for the fall term.

* * * * *

The art workers’ community lay in my way at Eos.

I dropped off a freight, one morning, in the Eos yards....

The gladdest to see me again was the Buddhist, Pfeiler.  He rushed up to me, in the dining hall, that night, and took both my hands in his ... thanking me for my kind thought of him in sending him my Ossian ... avowing that he had made a mistake in his opinion of me and asking my indulgence ... for he was old and a failure ... and I was young and could still look forward to success.