ged of "Con" Cummins, frankly taking
him into my confidence as to my state of heart toward Vanna. Which
confidence "Con" never abused, though it might have afforded endless
fields of fun.

"Con" framed the picture for me.

When alone with it, I often actually knelt to it, as to a holy image.
And I kissed and kissed it, till it was quite faded away.

* * * * *

Emma Silverman, the great anarchist leader, came to Laurel, with her
manager, Jack Leitman. I went to the Bellman House, the town's swellest
hotel, to see her. I had never met her but had long admired her for her
activities and bravery.

I found her a thick-built woman, after the gladiatorial fashion ... as
she moved she made me think of a battleship going into action. There was
something about her face ... a squareness of jaw, a belligerency, that
reminded me of Roosevelt, whom I had seen twice ... once, at Mt. Hebron,
when he had made a speech from the chapel platform ... (when I had
determined not to join in the general applause of one whom I considered
a mere demagogue--but, before I knew it, found myself on my feet
roaring inarticulately as he strode in) and again, after he had returned
from his African expedition, and had come to Laurel to dedicate a
fountain set up for the local horses and dogs by the S.P.C.A.

Jack Leitman looked to me like a fat nincompoop. Such a weakling as
great women must necessarily, it seems, "fall for." But he was an
efficient manager. Possessed of a large voice and an insistent manner,
he sold books by the dozen before and after Emma Silverman's
lectures....

Miss Silverman already knew of me through Summershire, the wealthy
socialist editor and owner of _Summershire's Magazine_, and Penton
Baxter. It thrilled me when she called me by my first name....

Her first lecture was on Sex. The hall was jammed to the doors by a
curiosity-moved crowd.

She began by assuming that she was not talking to idiots and cretins,
but to men and women of mature minds--so she could speak as she thought
in a forthright manner. She inveighed against the double standard. When
someone in the auditorium asked what she meant by the single standard
she replied, she meant sexual expression and experience for man and
woman on an equal footing ... the normal living of life without which no
human being could be really decent--and that regardless of marriage and
the conventions!

"The situation as it is, is odious ...