t out
to the front as a war correspondent. Said he liked my stuff about the
sodgers. He'll make a pot of money over here, won't he?"

We skipped across City Hall Square abreast of some trolley cars.

"I say, these trams keep one moving, don't they?" he said. "You know, I
was tremendously bucked by that department store you took me to see.
That's the sort of place one has to go to see the real art of America.
Those paintings in there, by the elevators, they were done by a young
English girl. Friend of mine--in fact, she did the pictures for my first
book. Pity you have so few poets over here. You mustn't make me lose my
train; I've got a date with Vachel Lindsay and Edgar Lee Masters in New
York to-night. Vachel's an amusing bird. I must get him over to England
and get him started. I've written to Edmund Gosse about him, and I'm
going to write again. What a pity Irvin Cobb doesn't write poetry! He's
a great writer. What vivacity, what a rich vocabulary!"

"Have you read Mark Twain?" we quavered.

"Oh, Mark's grand when he's serious; but when he tries to be funny, you
know, it's too obvious. I can always see him feeling for the joke. No,
it doesn't come off. You know an artist simply doesn't exist for me
unless he has something to say. That's what makes me so annoyed with
R.L.S. In 'Weir of Hermiston' and the 'New Arabian Nights' he really had
something to say; the rest of the time he was playing the fool on some
one else's instrument. You know style isn't something you can borrow
from some one else; it's the unconscious revelation of a man's own
personality."

We agreed.

"I wonder if there aren't some clubs around here that would like to hear
me talk?" he said. "You know, I'd like to come back to Philadelphia if I
could get some dates of that sort. Just put me wise, old man, if you
hear of anything. I was telling some of your poets in New York about the
lectures I've been giving. Those chaps are fearfully rough with one. You
know, they'll just ride over one roughshod if you give them a chance.
They hate to see a fellow a success. Awful tripe some of them are
writing. They don't seem to be expressing the spirit, the fine
exhilaration, of American life at all. If I had my way, I'd make every
one in America read Rabelais and Madame Bovary. Then they ought to study
some of the old English poets, like Marvell, to give them precision.
It's lots of fun telling them these things. They respond famously. Now
over in my c