“Here lies one whose fame was writ in water.” (How they cruelly laughed at that—­for a time!)

* * * * *

I gave a start, almost a scream of agony ... the candle, somehow, had served me a ghastly trick ... it had cast my shadow backward on the wall, like that shadow cast by the head of the dying poet, as Severn had sketched it....  I ran my hand over my face ... it was hollow and tight-drawn like the face of a consumptive.

The mass of resistance I had to face, for poetry’s sake, was too enormous ... my country’s motto was not “beauty is truth, truth beauty,” but “blessed be that man who can make two hills of corn grow where one bank of violets grew before,” ... and my pilgrimage, in that hour of vision, it disgusted me ... for I was making it not to some grand poet like L’Estrange, but to the home of the chief exponent of the “Honest-to-God, No-Nonsense-About-Me Hick School of Literature” ... and associated with him was the syndicate poet, William Struthers, called familiarly Uncle Bill, whose daily jingles run together as prose, were now making him a fortune.

With the coming of dawn the day cleared, the sun glistened on a thousand puddles, making them silver and gold....

By walking carefully on the side of the road, I made progress less muddy.  I was used to the squashing of the water in my shoes.  The weather turned warmer.

* * * * *

I found myself on the usual long one-street called Main Street, in the prosperous little city of Osageville.  It was Sunday.  A corner loiterer directed me to Jarvis Alexander Mackworth’s house.

A habitation of sequestered quiet ... as I stood before the door I heard the sunrise song of Rossini’s Wilhelm Tell ... a Red Seal record ... accompanied by the slow, dreamy following of a piano’s tinkle ... like harp sounds or remote, flowing water.

I halted, under a charm.  I waited till the melody was at an end before I knocked.  A small, pale-faced, pretty little woman answered.

“Does Mr. Jarvis Mackworth live here?”

“Yes.  Come in.  We have been expecting you.  You are the poet, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am the poet.”

“You’re a good walker ... we didn’t expect you before Monday or Tuesday....  Jarvis, here’s the poet-boy from the university.”

My host, unseen within, turned off another Red Seal record he had just started, again to the accompaniment of the piano....  Kreisler’s Caprice Viennoise....

Jarvis Alexander Mackworth came forth like a leisurely duck, waddling.  He was very, very fat.  He extended me a plump, white hand ... a slack hand-shake ... but not an unhearty one, rather a grip of easy welcome.

A kind, rubicund, moon-round face, full of large blue eyes smiling a gentle and kindly welcome ... if the face of Shelley’s father, plump and methodic-oracular, could have been joined to the wild, shining ecstasy of Shelley’s countenance itself—­you would have had Mackworth’s face before its time.  I never beheld such spirituality in a fat man.  His stoutness was not unpleasing.