ve a special job to finish ... tin-roofing ...
but if you want a place to stay where it is quiet, I have a camp, not
far out, on the Ossawatomie, where I go for week-ends...."

"Where is it? That would be fine. I'd like to stay there."

"You know where old Farmer Brown lives, by the abandoned church, just
outside of Perthville?"

"Yes. That's seven miles out on the Osageville road."

"Take the first turn to the right from his house, going west. It's an
unused bye-road and it runs plumb into my cabin. There's a frying pan
there ... and some flour ... and bacon ... tell you what ... it's been
broken into several times. I'll consider it worth while if you go and
live there, and I get no rent from you for it nor the room upstairs ...
you'll be alone, God knows--excepting Saturdays and Sundays."

* * * * *

I packed my Heine in a bundle ... with my Bible and my Josephus in the
Greek, along with Whiston's English version ... and I included a bundle
of books on New Testament times that made me groan under their weight.
For I planned to begin a four-act play on Judas, and must study for
writing that, as well as learn the "how" of the lyric....

The stupendousness of the silence of absolute solitude! At first the
thoughts run on with a tangle and jangle, a turmoil almost of madness
... then they quiet down into the peace that only a hermitage gives and
the objects of life are seen in their true relativity and perspective.

My diet was one of sow-belly, bread, and coffee, and what fish I caught
in the sluggish, muddy stream....

Saturday, toward sunset, I heard a whooping in the woods. It was Randall
coming with a few friends for his week-end, as he had warned. With him,
his wild brother, Jack; and Bill, his assistant plumber and
man-about-shop.

The drinking had begun before they were in sight of the shack. And it
was kept up till late Sunday night ... around a big fire in a cleared
space they sang and gambled and drank.

Randall served great hilarity to the party by trying to breed his gelded
horse to his mare ... the mare kicked and squealed, indignant at the
cheat, looking back, flattening her ears, and showing the vicious whites
of her eyes. Several times the infuriated beast's heels whished an inch
or so from Randall's head, as he forced the gelding to advance and
mount. We rolled on the grass, laughing ... myself included.

Then all stripped to the buff for a swim in the stream .