“Young man, if you did—­as you won’t—­” smashed Roosevelt, with his characteristic of clenched right fist brought down in the open palm of the left hand—­“if you did—­I’d simply brand you as a liar ... and shame you before the world.”

“And so it was that Roosevelt expressed himself freely ... and at the same time protected himself.”

* * * * *

We stood on the top of Azure Mound.  Baxter was puffing heavily, for it had been a hard climb.

At our feet extended a panorama of what seemed like a whole State.

The wide-spread fields of wheat, of corn, exalted us.

“God, what a glorious country!... no wonder Walt loved America ... in spite of the abuses capital has perpetrated in it.”

“Walt Mason?” I enquired, mischievously....

“No,” he responded, seriously, “Walt Whitman.”

“But our poet laureate to-day is Walt Mason ... and our State philosopher, the sage of Potato Hill, Ed Howe, is an honest-to-God stand-patter ... that’s Kansas to-day for you, in spite of her wide, scenic vistas....

“Nevertheless,” I went on, “Kansas does develop marvellous people ... we have Carrie Nation—­”

“And Johnnie Gregory!” put in Baxter.

“I don’t want just to belong to Kansas.”

It was I who was humourless now, “I’m sick of its corn-fed bourgeois ideals ...  I want to belong to the world—­as—­you do!”

We trudged back to town.

“What a site for a university!... the men who put those buildings up there on the Hill must have dreamed greatly ... look at the sun!... the buildings are transfigured into a fairy city!”

* * * * *

My office as social manager for Baxter during his stay I conducted badly.  I was so excited and flattered by the visit of one whom I considered one of the first geniuses of the world, that I hardly knew what I was doing.  I listened to all he said as if an oracle spoke.

I asked him if he would like to meet some of the professors on the Hill....  I hurriedly gathered together a small group of them and Baxter gave a talk to them in one of the unoccupied recitation rooms.  Nor did he fail in telling them that in me Kansas had a great poet in the making ... the professors who were not invited to my hasty reception considered themselves slighted.

When I saw Baxter off at the station we were calling each other by our first names.

“Good-bye, Johnnie!”

“Good-bye, Penton!”

“Don’t fail to visit me at Warriors’ River, this fall, if you can do so conveniently.”

I assured him that I would not fail.

For I had spoken with him of my determination to ship on the Great Lakes for a few months, to see if I couldn’t garner some poetic material for my poems of modern life that I was writing for the National Magazine.

“My wife and I will be at Warriors’ River till late in the fall.  We’re staying at Stephen Barton’s Health Home.  Barton is a good friend of mine....  I am helping him out, since he left New Jersey, where he was forced, by a series of petty prosecutions, to give up Perfection City....  My wife will be glad to see you ... she knows your poetry already.”