For down the thousand mile incline of the Mississippibasin it was
pouring with accelerating tempo, engulfing or driving everything before
it. It was the old story of the creeping stolons, the steppedup tangled
mass and the great, towering bulk behind; the falling forward and then
the continued headway. Once more the eastbound trains and highways
clogged with refugees.

My affairs not permitting a longer stay, I returned to New York, but I
could not pry Joe from his preoccupation. "A W," he argued, "I'd be no
more use to Consolidated Pemmican right now than groundglass in a ham
sandwich. My backside might be in a swivelchair, but my soul would be
right up here. It's Whitman translated visibly and tangibly, A W, 'Come
lovely and soothing death, undulate round and round.' Besides, youve got
the Old Man now, he's worth more to you than I ever will be; he loves
business. It's just like the army--without a doddering old generalstaff
to pull him back every time he gets enthusiastic."

If anyone else in my organization had talked like this I would have
fired him immediately, but I was sure down underneath his aesthetic
poses and artistic pretensions there was a foundation of good
commonsense inherited from the general. Give the boy his head, I
thought; let him stay here and rhapsodize till he gets sick of it; he'll
come back the better executive for having got it out of his system.
Also, as he himself pointed out, I had his father to rely on and he was
a man to whip up production if ever there was one.

_50._ The chief purpose of my visit to the grass was, at least
momentarily, a failure. There was little point sampling and analyzing
the weed for its possible use as an ingredient in a food concentrate if
it were impossible to set up a permanent place to gather and process it.
I won't say I considered my time wasted, but its employment had not been
profitable.

But even immersed in the everexpanding affairs of Consolidated Pemmican
and Allied Industries, as we now called the parent company, I could not
get away from the grass. Each hour's eastward thrust was reported in
detail by an hysterical radio and every day the newspapers printed maps
showing the newly overrun territory. Once more the grass was the most
prominent thought in men's minds, not only over the land of its being,
but throughout the world. Scientists of every nationality studied it at
firsthand and only strict laws and rigid searches by customs inspectors