IM"

I waited in a fever of eagerness and impatience for the arrival of this
man whom I idealised and looked on as a great man ... the man who had
written the _Les Miserables_ of the American workingman.

* * * * *

Harry Varden, editor of the _Cry for Right_, had been to Laurel a week
previously, to address a socialist local, and I had looked him up, at
the house of the "comrade" where he was passing the night. The comrade
sent me up to Varden's room, where I found the latter just getting out
of bed. I shall always think of him in his proletarian grey woollen
underdrawers and undershirt. In which he had evidently slept. He had the
bed-habits of the masses. And the room was stale with bad air; like the
masses, he, too, slept with windows shut.

Varden's monthly magazine _The World to Be_, had occasionally printed a
poem of mine ... and I was paid five dollars for each poem.

Varden was a frail, jolly little chap, absolutely fearless and alert and
possessed of a keen sense of humour which he could turn, on occasion,
even against himself.

I breakfasted with him. He had good table manners, but, from time to
time, he forgot himself and smacked his lips keenly. And the egg dripped
on his chin as he flashed a humorous incident that had happened to him
on one of his lecture trips....

After breakfast he and I took a long walk together ... we began speaking
of Penton Baxter ... I spoke in high praise of the great novelist ...
reverently and with awe.

"Yes, yes," Varden assented, "Penton is all you say, but he has no sense
of humour ... and he takes himself and his work as seriously as if the
destiny of the human race depended on it ... which is getting in a bad
way, for a reformer, you know--gives a chap's enemies and antagonists so
many good openings....

"When Penton was writing _The Slaughter House_ and we were running it
serially, his protagonist, Jarl--it seemed he didn't know how to dispose
of him ... and the book was running on and on interminably.... I wired
him 'for God's sake kill Jarl.' ...

"Baxter took my telegram much to heart ... was deeply aggrieved I
afterward learned ... the dear boy ... he did 'kill Jarl' finally ...
and absent-mindedly brought him to life again, later on in his book."

And Harry Varden laughed excitedly like a boy, and he leaned sideways
and smote his half-bent, sharp, skinny knee with his left hand. I could
perceive that that was a grotesque p