.. if you want a picture of me on the way, it will
have to be on the way!"
"Of all the fools! Ain't the alleys muddy enough to be like the gumbo
you'll have to plough through?" he teased. But I wouldn't allow him to
take a fraudulent picture. He had to come with me, through the mud,
grumbling, to the edge of town.
There, on the country road that led in the direction of Osageville, my
feet rooted in gumbo, a sort of thick composite of clay and mud that
clings to the feet in huge lumps, I had my photograph taken ... actually
on the march toward my destination ... no hat on ... a copy of Keats in
my hand.
Travers waved me good-bye. "You'll see the story in the _Era_ Sunday
sure," he shouted, in a tone half affection, half irony. I was nettled
at the irony. I wanted it to be looked on as a quest entirely heroic.
* * * * *
It began to rain. Far off, like a high, great ship riding on the
horizon, rode the hill, with its cluster of university buildings.
My first impulse was to turn back, to quit. That is always my first
impulse. The instincts of my bourgeois ancestry against the unusual, the
impractical,--the safe-and-sane conservatism of the farmers and clerks
and small business men bred in my people for generations!...
I pushed on through the clinging, maddening gumbo, slithering and
sliding. Fortunately, I wore an overcoat, which, after it had reached
the saturation point, shed most of the steady, oblique-driving rain that
came for miles over the plains in a succession of grey, windy sheets.
Pages:
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366