cated that she
wanted her husband to send me away.

"She wants you to go," whispered Langworth, humouring his wife like a
sick child. He escorted me into the storm porch. "You have no idea," he
apologised defensively, "how human a dog can be, or how fond of one you
can become...."

"What's this?" I asked, taken aback. He had thrust a check into my hand
as he shook hands good-bye.

"It's a check I've just endorsed over to you. Royalties on a recent
text-book. Please do take it." I had intimated that I would probably be
compelled to quit college and go on the tramp again ... confessing
frankly, also, that a stationary life got on my nerves at times.

"I want you to keep on, not go back to the tramp life ... we'll make
something of you yet," he jested, diffidently, steering me off when he
noticed that I was about to heap profuse thanks on him.

"How can I ever thank you--"

"By studying hard and making good. By becoming the great poet I wanted
to be."

"But how can I pay this back? It will take a long time--"

"When you arrive at the place where you can afford to pay me back, pass
it on to someone else who is struggling as you are now, and as I myself
have struggled."

* * * * *

Always, always I wrote my poetry and kept studying in my own fashion ...
marks of proficiency, attendance at class went by the board. My studying
was rather browsing among the multitudes of books in the college
library. I passed hours, back in the stacks, forgetting day and night
... recitations ... meals....

I was soon in trouble with my professors ... I was always up, and even
ahead, with my studies, but I was a disrupting influence for the other
students, because of my irregularity.

I discovered wonderful books back there in the "stack" ... the works of
Paracelsus, who whispered me that wisdom was to be found more in the
vagabond bye-ways of life than in the ordered and regulated highways.
That the true knowledge was to be garnered from knocking about with
vagrants, gipsies, carriers ... from corners in wayside inns where
travellers discoursed....

And there was Boehmen, the inspired German shoemaker, who was visited
by an angel, or some sort of divine stranger, and given his first
illumination outside his shop ... and later walked a-field and heard
what the flowers were saying to each other, seeing through all creation
at one glance, crystal-clear.

And there were the unusual poets ... old Ma