"KANSAS POET HONOURED
------------------------
AUTHOR OF 'SLAUGHTER HOUSE' TO VISIT HIM"
I waited in a fever of eagerness and impatience for the arrival of this
man whom I idealised and looked on as a great man ... the man who had
written the _Les Miserables_ of the American workingman.
* * * * *
Harry Varden, editor of the _Cry for Right_, had been to Laurel a week
previously, to address a socialist local, and I had looked him up, at
the house of the "comrade" where he was passing the night. The comrade
sent me up to Varden's room, where I found the latter just getting out
of bed. I shall always think of him in his proletarian grey woollen
underdrawers and undershirt. In which he had evidently slept. He had the
bed-habits of the masses. And the room was stale with bad air; like the
masses, he, too, slept with windows shut.
Varden's monthly magazine _The World to Be_, had occasionally printed a
poem of mine ... and I was paid five dollars for each poem.
Varden was a frail, jolly little chap, absolutely fearless and alert and
possessed of a keen sense of humour which he could turn, on occasion,
even against himself.
I breakfasted with him. He had good table manners, but, from time to
time, he forgot himself and smacked his lips keenly. And the egg dripped
on his chin as he flashed a humorous incident that had happened to him
on one of his lecture trips.
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