Then, back to the university for my last year of leisurely study and reading, in the face of the desolate poverty that would have defeated many another man, but to which I was used as a customary condition.  After that—­Paris or London, or both!  Kansas was growing too small for me.

* * * * *

I have mentioned that Baxter had a head too large for his body.  Daniel, his son, slight and frail and barely eight years of age, possessed the same characteristic....

I footed it out to Baxter’s tents, faithfully as to a shrine, each afternoon.  The mornings he and I both occupied in writing.  He, on a novel which was the story of the love-life of his wife and himself, and of his literary struggles, called Love’s Forthfaring; I, on my abortive songs of the Great Lakes that all came forth still-born ... because I was yet under the vicious literary influence of the National Magazine, and was writing my verse, trying to be inspired by the concepts of middle-class morality ... or what was even worse, I was attempting to glorify the under-dog; who, if he were the demigod Socialists portray him, would by no means remain the under-dog.

* * * * *

I found Baxter more a-flame than ever for the utter reformation of mankind ... in the way they dressed ... stiff collars hurt the nervous system, pressing as they did, on the spine ... in the books they read ... he wished to start a library that would sell cheaply and bring all the world’s great thought and poetry into factory, and every worker’s home ... all conventional ideas of marriage and religion must go by the board and freedom in every respect be granted to men and women.

It was good to listen to this sincere, naive man, still young ... who would re-make life nearer to the beauty and harmony that Shelley also dreamed for mankind.  I lived in a state of perpetual reverence toward Baxter.  This man tried to live his ideals, as well as write about them.

In matters of diet I accepted Baxter’s theories but, humanly, did not live up to them.  He was a vegetarian.

Later I was to learn that he was to himself an experiment station.  On his own person he directly and practically tried out each idea ... his wife was also a convertee, slightly reluctant, to his tests ... and his son, perforce.  Baxter actually kept a vegetarian dog.  “Even carnivorous animals thrive better on a vegetarian diet.”  But the dog was no corroboration of his theory.  It lacked gloss and shine to its coat, and seldom barked.

One afternoon I came upon Dan, Baxter’s son, puking in the bushes, not far from the tents.

“What’s the matter, Dan,” he turned to me, wan, and serious, and with a grown-up look on his face.

“Nothing!  Only sometimes the warm milk father has me drink makes me throw up.  I’m on a milk diet, you know.”

“Does your father know that you can’t keep the milk down?”