rd, editor of
the New York _Independent_. He informed me that he had taken a poem of
mine. And, as indubitable proof, he enclosed a check for five dollars.

Professor Langworth was himself a poet of no mean ability: he was
pleased to hear that I had sold a poem to the _Independent_.

* * * * *

I was sick of being shunned because I carried stable smells about with
me wherever I went.

Also, sanguinely, with the sale of my first poem, I was sure that my
literary career had begun, and that from now on I would be enabled to
earn my living by my pen, and pay my way as a student, too. So I threw
up the job that made me smell so unpleasantly.

* * * * *

The city of Laurel had been, in the early days, in the memory of
settlers yet living a hale life, a pioneer outpost. Through it flowed a
great, muddy river. The flat roofs of its main street still preserved a
frontier appearance. It was surrounded by high, wind-swept bluffs.

They still talked of the Quantrell raid and repeated the story of it ...
and of how the six men were lynched under the bridge that swung over the
dam....

At the time of the slavery agitation its citizens had encouraged the
negroes to escape, had petted them, idealised them as no human beings of
any race should be idealised ... had run schools specially for them
where it was considered an honour for the women of the settlers to
teach.

Now, the great negro population, at first so encouraged, was crowded
into a festering multitude of dilapidated buildings that stood on the
flats close by the region where the river coiled through level acres of
low-lying country. This place was known as the "Bottoms."

I am trying to give you the flavour of the town.

They had prohibition there, too ... long before it won nation-wide power
... consequently the negroes drove a vast trade in bootlegging ... and a
concomitant prostitution of coloured women and girls throve. One or two
students on the hill had, to my knowledge, negro mistresses of whom they
were fond....

The drug stores did a thriving business in the sale of spiritus
frumenti--for "snake bite" and "stomach trouble," which seemed to be
prevalent and epidemic throughout the community.

* * * * *

Saturday was market day for the farmers who lived in the adjoining
countryside ... and the livery stables where they put up their horses
were also resorts for