...
A great area of the field looked as if it had fallen in the track of a
victorious army, or had been fallen upon by a cloud of locusts.
A chill came in with twilight, and we built a fire, and danced about it.
I danced and danced ... we all danced and howled in Indian disharmony
... wailing ... screeching ... falling ... getting up again ... when I
danced and leaped the world resumed its order ... when I stood still or
sat down plump, the trees took up the gyrations where I had left off,
and went about in solemn, ringing circles ... green and graceful minuets
of nature....
"Here's to good old Gregory, drink 'er down, drink 'er down!" I heard
the boys, led by Jack Travers, bray discordantly.
"Want 'a hear some songs?" I quavered, interrogating.
"What kind o' songs?" asked a big, hulking boy that we called 'Black
Jim,' because of his dark complexion.
"Real songs," I replied, "jail songs, tramp songs, coacaine songs!"
All those Rabelaisan folk-things I had lost while hopping the freight,
came surging back, each not in fragments, but entire. Drunk, I did then
what my brain since, intoxicated or sober, cannot do ... I rendered them
all, one after the other, just as I had copied them down....
* * * * *
"And more! Gregory, more!" the boys kept shouting.
I sat down and began to cry because I had lost the script.
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