.. Walsh will charge
me." Walsh Summers was the proprietor.
* * * * *
Big, fat Walsh welcomed me and Travers.
"No, Johnnie, I won't charge you. Instead, you and Jack are dining as
guests of the house."
And he would have it no other way.
* * * * *
Ally Merton was right about appearances. To have your shirts laundered
regularly makes a man a different being. People that only noticed me
before with a sort of surreptitious mockery now began to treat me with
surprised respect. Professors invited me even more--the more
conservative of them--to dine at their homes.
And it was delightful to have living quarters where there was both hot
and cold running water. I took a cold bath, every morning, after my
exercise, and a hot bath, every night, before going to bed.
The place was well-heated, too. I no longer had to sit up in bed, the
covers drawn to my chin to keep from freezing, while I read, studied,
wrote. Nor did I need sit on my hands, in alternation, to keep one warm
while I rhymed with the other, during those curious spells of
inspiration, those times of ecstasy--occurring mostly in the night--when
I would write and write so rapidly that morning would find me often not
able to decipher the greater part of what I had written ... five or ten
poems in a night ... scrawled madly almost like automatic writing.
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