fter a thoughtful pause, "you know
you nuts are teaching me a lot of things....

"The trouble with the educated, regular folks is that they lose so much
by drawing the line ... often everything that is spontaneous and
fine.... This thing called God, you know, draws the line nowhere....

"If 'Crazy' Speedwell fell heir to a large sum of money, his relatives
could find a commission of physicians anywhere, who would honestly have
him into custody for lunacy ... yet, in some respects, he is the wisest
and kindest man I have ever known ... though, in others, he is often
such a fool as to try my patience very hard, at times."

* * * * *

Most of us who had arrived at "The Studios" from "foreign" parts, slept
in the common dormitory.

We held frequent "roughhouses" there, the younger of us ... to the
annoyance of Speedwell. Spalton finally gave him permission to sleep and
live, alone, in the shed where the fire-truck and hose was stored....

One night, for malicious fun, a beak-nosed young prize-fighter, and
several others (including myself) sneaked into his abode while he slept
... thoughtlessly we turned the gas on and tiptoed out again....

Not long after he came staggering forth, half-suffocated....

Everybody laughed at the tale of this ... at first Spalton himself
laughed, our American spirit of rough joking and horse-play gaining the
uppermost in him ... but then he recalled to mind the seriousness of our
practical joke, and burned with anger at us over what we had done. And
he threatened to "fire" on the spot anyone who ever again molested
"Crazy" Speedwell....

* * * * *

"Old Pfeiler" we called him....

Pfeiler had attended one of Spalton's lectures at Chicago.

Afterward, he had come up front and asked the lecturer if he could make
a place for him at Eos ... that he was out of a job ... starving ... a
poor German scholar ... formerly, in better days, a man of much wealth
and travel....

He had spent his last nickel for admission to Spalton's lecture. Spalton
brought him back to the Eos Artwork Studios.

There he found that the queer, gentle, old man was as helpless as a
child ... all he could be trusted to do was to write addresses on
letters ... which he was set at, not too exactingly....

I never saw so happy a man as Pfeiler was that winter.

He was a Buddhist, not by pose, but by sincere conviction. He thought,
also, that the Koran