.. but Baxter kept the fight going as long as he could. He
was accused of loving notoriety. His attitude toward it was mixed. He
did love notoriety ... he enjoyed every clipping about himself with
infinite gusto. But he also used publicity as a lever to get things done
with, that would otherwise never have been noticed. The others were
willing to consider what had happened to them, as a private affair.
Penton gracelessly used that, and every private adventure for
propaganda--turned it sincerely in the way he thought it might benefit
people....
He gave the papers a very bad poem--_The Prison Night_. I remember but
one line of it--
"The convict rasped his vermin-haunted hide."
* * * * *
"Come, get into the group; I want the papers to tell the public about
you, too," he urged me, prophetically, as I stood on the outskirts,
while three camera men were focusing on him, as he stood, expectant,
blandly smiling, and vain-glorious.
"Boys, I want my friend, the poet, Mr. John Gregory, in the picture,
too."
"Oh, all right!" they assented indifferently, which injured my egotism.
But I was too adroit to show it. I still demurred with mock modesty.
Penton would have been franker.
Finally, at his urgency, they snapped us, our arms about each other's
shoulders.
In the light of subsequent events, they were glad of that picture.
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