ood in front of the Eos Artwork Studios.

I saw a boy coming down the path from one of the buildings.

"Would you tell me please where I can find the Master?" I asked,
reverently.

The boy gave me a long stare.

"Oh, you mean Mr. Spalton?"

"Yes."

"That's him ... there ... choppin' wood."

There was a young man and an older one, both chopping wood, in the back
of a building, but in fairly open view.

I walked to where they worked with both inward and outward trepidation,
for, to me, Spalton was one of the world's great men.

Just as I reached the spot, the younger of the two threw down his axe.

"So long, Dad! now I'll go into the shop and tend to those letters."

I stood in the presence of the great Roderick Spalton himself, the man
who, in his _Brief Visits to the Homes of Famous Folk_, had written more
meatily and wisely than any American author since Emerson ... the man
whose magazine called _The Dawn_, had rendered him an object of almost
religious veneration and worship to thousands of Americans whose spirits
reached for something more than the mere piling of dollars one on the
other....

I stood before him, visibly overwhelmed. It was evident that my silent
hero-worship was sweet to him. He bespoke me gently and courteously.

"So you want to become an Eoite?"

"Yes," I whispered, bending my gaze humbly before his.

"And what is your name, my dear boy."

"John Gregory, Master!"

"What have you brought with you? where is your baggage?"

"I--I lost my baggage ... all I have with me is a-a r-razor."

He leaned his head back and laughed joyously. His lambent brown eyes
glowed with humour. I liked the man.

"Yes, we'll give you a job--Razorre!" he assured me, calling me by the
nickname which clung to me during my stay....

"Take that axe and show me what you can do."

I caught up the axe and fell to with enthusiasm. The gospel of the
dignity and worth of labour that he preached thrilled in me. It was the
first time I ever enjoyed working....

As we worked the Master talked ... talked with me as if he had known me
for years--as if I, too, were Somebody.

There was nothing he did not discuss, in memorable phrase and trenchant,
clever epigram. For he saw that I believed in him, worshipped
whole-heartedly at his shrine of genius, and he gave me, in return, of
his best. For the first time I saw what human language is for. I thought
of Goethe at Weimar ... Wilde's clever conversation in London.