...
His head was much too large for his body ... a strong head ... strong
Roman nose ... decisive chin, but with too deep a cleft in it. His mouth
was loose and cruel--like mine. His face was as smooth as a boy's or
woman's ... on each cheek a patch here and there of hair, like the hair
on an old maid's face.
More than a year later his wife confided to me that "Pennie," as she
dubbed him affectionately, could not grow a beard ... and she laughed at
his solemnly shaving once a week, as a matter of ritual, anyhow....
Each of us went with bent knees as we walked, as if wading against a
rising tide of invisible opposition.
I discoursed of a new religion--a non-ascetic one based on the
individual's spiritual duty to enjoy life--that I meditated inaugurating
as soon as I left college. He advised me to wait till I was at least
Christ's age when he began his public ministry, thirty-five or six. His
face lit with frolic....
Then, in rapid transition, he soberly discoursed on the religion he
himself had in mind ... instinctively I knew it would not do to make
sport of his dreams, as he had of mine.
Harry Varden was right. Where he himself was involved in the slightest,
Baxter absolutely had no sense of humour.
Baxter told me of the great men he had met on intimate terms, in the
wider world of life and letters I had not yet attained to .
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