proud to act as her introducer. The boys liked her. She was like a good
gale of wind to the minds and souls of us.

* * * * *

I saw Emma and Jack off at the train. I carried two of her grips for
her.

"Take Johnnie with you!" jovially shouted some of the boys--a motor car
full of them--Phi Alphs--as we stepped to the station platform....

She answered them with a jolly laugh, a wave of the hand....

"No, I'll leave him here ... you need a few like him with you!"

* * * * *

"I have something on my conscience," remarked Miss Silverman to me,
"Johnnie, do you really think that old professor was speaking the
truth?"

"I'm sure of it, Miss Silverman."

"Why, then, I'm heartily sorry ... and it was rough of me ... and will
you tell the professor for me that I sincerely apologise for having hurt
his feelings ... tell him I have so many jackasses attending my lectures
all over the country, who rise and say foolish and insincere things,
just to stand in well with the communities they live in--that sometimes
it angers me, their hypocrisy--and then I blaze forth pretty strong and
lay them flat!"

* * * * *

Professor Wilton was a Phi Alph. From that time he was spoken of as "the
only Phi Alph Virgin."

* * * * *

The periods when I had rested secure in the knowledge of where my next
meal was coming from, had been few. Life had pressed me close to its
ragged edge ever since I could remember.

Now I was accorded a temporary relief. Penton Baxter wrote me that he
had procured me a patron ... Henry Belton, the millionaire Single-Taxer,
had consented to endow me at fifteen dollars a week, for six months. I
had informed Baxter, in one of my many letters to him--for we had
developed an intimate correspondence--that I had a unique fairy drama in
mind, but could not write it because of the harassment of my struggle
for bread and life.... I had laid aside for the present my projected
"Judas."

* * * * *

Singing all the time, I packed my books in a large box which the corner
grocer gave me, and, giving up my noisy room over the tinshop, I was off
to the Y.M.C.A., where I engaged a room, telling the secretary, who knew
me well, of my good luck, and enjoining him not to tell anyone else ...
which I promptly did myself....

I selected one of the best rooms, a corner