My poems, two of which I
had sold to the _Century_, two to _Everybody's_, and a score to the
_Independent_, were, as soon as they appeared in those magazines,
immediately copied by the Kansas newspapers. And the Kansas City _Star_
featured a story of me at Laurel, playing up my freaks and oddities ...
but accompanied by a flattering picture that "Con" Cummins, our college
photographer, had taken.
Also I was receiving occasional letters from strangers who had read my
poems. But they were mostly letters from cranks ... or from girls very,
very young and sentimental, or on the verge of old-maidhood, who were
casting about for some escape from the narrow daily life that environed
them....
But one morning a letter came to me so scrawlingly addressed that I
marvelled at the ability of the postal authorities in deciphering it.
The writer of it hailed me as a poet of great achievement already, but
of much greater future promise.... Mr. Lephil, editor of the _National
Magazine_, for whom he was writing a serial, had showed him some of my
verse, and he must hasten to encourage me ... I puzzled long over the
writer's signature.... It could not be possible! but it seemed to be
inscribed with the name of a novelist famous for his investigations of
capitalistic abuses of the people ... the author of the sensational
novel, _The Slaughter House_, which was said to out-Zola Zola--Penton
Baxter.
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