I was missing my books and my leisure,
longing for the cool alcoves of books in the university "stack."
"You understand me, I hope ... business is business and work is work.
I've found it doesn't do to argue ... only stirs up trouble....
"I hope you don't think all this debating will end after you're gone?...
Oh, no,--for the next week or so the boys will continue shooting their
mouths off ... the Baptist will fight the Methodist, and both will join
against the Seventh Day Adventist ... and the one Catholic will be
assailed by all hands....
"Before you came, no one knew what the other fellow believed, and no
one cared ... but now you've started something."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Bonton."
"It can't be helped now ... don't fail to let me know in what magazines
your poems on threshing and the harvest will appear."
* * * * *
I trudged townward, light-hearted ... a poem began to come to me before
I had gone a mile ... at intervals I sat down and wrote a few lines....
That fall the _National Magazine_ printed _The Threshers_ and _The
Harvest_ and _The Cook-Shack_, three poems, the fruit of that work. All
three written on the road as I walked back to town ... and all three
didactic and ridiculous in their praise of the worker.
* * * * *
Frank Randall, tinsmith and plumber, who ran his shop on the main
street, rented me a back room over his store, for two dollars a week.
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