...
After breakfast he and I took a long walk together ... we began speaking
of Penton Baxter ... I spoke in high praise of the great novelist ...
reverently and with awe.
"Yes, yes," Varden assented, "Penton is all you say, but he has no sense
of humour ... and he takes himself and his work as seriously as if the
destiny of the human race depended on it ... which is getting in a bad
way, for a reformer, you know--gives a chap's enemies and antagonists so
many good openings....
"When Penton was writing _The Slaughter House_ and we were running it
serially, his protagonist, Jarl--it seemed he didn't know how to dispose
of him ... and the book was running on and on interminably.... I wired
him 'for God's sake kill Jarl.' ...
"Baxter took my telegram much to heart ... was deeply aggrieved I
afterward learned ... the dear boy ... he did 'kill Jarl' finally ...
and absent-mindedly brought him to life again, later on in his book."
And Harry Varden laughed excitedly like a boy, and he leaned sideways
and smote his half-bent, sharp, skinny knee with his left hand. I could
perceive that that was a grotesque platform gesture of his, when he
drove a comic point home.
* * * * *
I was waiting at the station ... where I had shaken hands with Bob
Fitzsimmons, and had seen Emma Silverman off....
Penton Baxter was due on the eleven o'clock train from Kansas City.
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