I
think the tents were even wired for electric light.
Baxter welcomed me. But I took a room for a week in town, though he
urged me to stay with him. But when I had the means I liked better to be
independent. I calculated living a week in Warriors' River for ten or
twelve dollars. That would leave me thirty dollars over, from what I had
earned while working on the _Overland_.
Then, back to the university for my last year of leisurely study and
reading, in the face of the desolate poverty that would have defeated
many another man, but to which I was used as a customary condition.
After that--Paris or London, or both! Kansas was growing too small for
me.
* * * * *
I have mentioned that Baxter had a head too large for his body. Daniel,
his son, slight and frail and barely eight years of age, possessed the
same characteristic....
I footed it out to Baxter's tents, faithfully as to a shrine, each
afternoon. The mornings he and I both occupied in writing. He, on a
novel which was the story of the love-life of his wife and himself, and
of his literary struggles, called _Love's Forthfaring_; I, on my
abortive songs of the Great Lakes that all came forth still-born ...
because I was yet under the vicious literary influence of the _National
Magazine_, and was writing my verse, trying to be inspired by the
concepts of middle-class morality .
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