store old stoves in. But he moved them
out.

With a sense of despair, compensated by a feeling of sacrifice for my
poetry, I found myself once more back over the tinshop, the hammers
sounding and crashing below.

Old Blore, the cancer doctor, lived in a room in the front. All day long
he sat drinking rum and sugar ... and shipping out his cancer cure, a
white mixture like powdered sugar. Whether it did any good or not, he
believed in it himself....

I have not written about him before ... there are so many odd characters
that I came in contact with that I have not written about ... for this
book is about myself....

But old Blore ... he came waddling back to me, drunk, as usual, on his
rum and sugar.

"Welcome back, Johnnie ... come on, you and Frank, into my room ...
we've got to celebrate your return."

Frank and I set down the stove we were moving, dusted our hands off,
and followed.

"But I won't drink any of your rum, Ed! It's got too much of a kick."

"--nonsense ... good Jamaica rum never hurt nobody."

We drank several rounds of rum and water, with sugar. And we jocosely
joined together in singing the cancer doctor's favourite hymn--"We're
drifting down the stream of time, we haven't got long to stay."

Then Frank and Ed. retailed to me the practical jokes they had played on
each other since I had been gone from among them ... on big Sam, the
chocolate-coloured shoemaker who had his shop next door ... and an
obscene one on a half-wit named Elmer, who was one of Frank's helpers
... that, though it was pretty raw, made me choke and gasp with
merriment ... and they told me how, one night, they had wired the iron
roof in the back, so that about ten cats that were mewling and
quarrelling there, received a severe electric shock ... how funny and
surprised they'd acted.

* * * * *

Most serviceably a check from the _National Magazine_ came, for
twenty-five dollars ... I had sold them a prophetic poem on airships.
The check ameliorated my condition. I saw my way clear to a few weeks
more of regular eating.

* * * * *

Then, on top of that, one day a telegram came....

"Am on my way West. Will stop off visit you at Laurel--Penton."

* * * * *

Travers rushed the story to the Kansas City _Star_.

"KANSAS POET HONOURED
------------------------
AUTHOR OF 'SLAUGHTER HOUSE' TO VISIT H