mpathy with any of his projects,
he insensibly drifted into a relationship closer and closer, with this
girl ... they used to take long walks into the pines together ... and be
observed coming back slowly out of the sunset ... hand in hand ... to
drop each other's hands, when they considered that the observing line of
vision had been reached.

* * * * *

Lying under my huge army tent, by the shore of pretty little Lake Emily,
I dreamed long and often, in the hush of starry midnight, of
reconstructing the life of the whole world--especially the love-life
between men and women.

Shelley was my God, not Christ. Shelley's notes to _Queen Mab_ were my
creed, as his poetry and Whitman's furnished me my Bible. Through them I
would reform the world!

I had not realised then (as Shelley did not till his death), the
terrific inertia of people, their content, even, with the cramping and
conventional ideas and beliefs that hold them in unconscious slavery....

I think that summer I learned Shelley and Whitman by heart.

And Keats was more than my creed. He comprised my life!

Day by day I took care of my body, gaining in weight, filling out the
hollows in my face, till I had grown into a presentable young man. For
the first time in my life I knew the meaning of perfect health. Every
atom of my blood tingled with natural happiness as I have felt it in
later days, under the stimulation of good wine.

No coffee, no tea, no beefsteak, no alcohol....

On that summer's ideal living I built the foundation of the health and
strength, that, long after, I finally acquired as a permanent
possession.

* * * * *

Stephen Barton and I had many interesting talks together. With the
cultural background of Europe he might have been a Rousseau or a
Phalanisterian. As it was, he ran a "natural life" magazine which,
though crude, benefited hundreds of people. What though it showed
pictures of stupid men and women revealing, in poses rivalling the
contortionist, their physical development acquired through his methods.

* * * * *

We would collect many people about us, to serve as a nucleus from which
the future society of men and women would expand ... we would all live
together as nearly naked as possible, because that was, after all, the
only pure thing ... as Art showed, in its painting and sculpture. We
would make our livings by the manufactu