us mockery now began to treat me with
surprised respect. Professors invited me even more--the more
conservative of them--to dine at their homes.

And it was delightful to have living quarters where there was both hot
and cold running water. I took a cold bath, every morning, after my
exercise, and a hot bath, every night, before going to bed.

The place was well-heated, too. I no longer had to sit up in bed, the
covers drawn to my chin to keep from freezing, while I read, studied,
wrote. Nor did I need sit on my hands, in alternation, to keep one warm
while I rhymed with the other, during those curious spells of
inspiration, those times of ecstasy--occurring mostly in the night--when
I would write and write so rapidly that morning would find me often not
able to decipher the greater part of what I had written ... five or ten
poems in a night ... scrawled madly almost like automatic writing....

* * * * *

William Jennings Bryan came to talk to us at our school auditorium. His
lecture, _The Prince of Peace_, soon degenerated into an old-fashioned
attack on science and the evolutionary theory.

The professors sat bored and mute on the platform beside him, while he
evacuated the forty-year-old wheeze of "your great-great-great-grandfather
might have been a monkey, but, thank God, mine was not!" he won the
usual great response of handclapping and laughter with this....

And then he held out a glass of water, to prove that miracles might
happen, because God, being omnipotent, could, at will, suspend natural
laws.

"Look at this glass of water. I hold it out at arm's length, so. If I
did not hold it, it would drop to the floor and shatter into pieces.
Thus I, by a human act, suspend the law of gravitation ... so God!--"
There was huzzaing and applause. Several professors uneasily shifted the
crossing of their knees ... one or two stared diplomatically at the
ceiling.

I grew angry and sent forth several sharp hisses before I knew what I
was doing ... the effect was an electric stillness for the moment. Then
a roar of indignant applause drowned my protest. And I stopped and
remained quiet, with much craning of necks about me, to look at me.

As the crowd poured out, I ran out into the road, from group to group,
and, wherever I found a professor walking along, I vociferated my
protest at our allowing such a back-water performance at the State's
supposed centre of intelligence.

"But, G