es to
his hat...."

"Suppose, Mr. President," Baxter had put to him, at the same time
expressing his amazement at the president's open manner of speech before
men he had never even met before ... men perhaps of antagonistic shades
of opinion, "suppose I should go out from here and give to the
newspapers the things you have just said! How would you protect, defend
yourself?"

"Young man, if you did--_as you won't_--" smashed Roosevelt, with his
characteristic of clenched right fist brought down in the open palm of
the left hand--"if you did--I'd simply brand you as a liar ... and shame
you before the world."

"And so it was that Roosevelt expressed himself freely ... and at the
same time protected himself."

* * * * *

We stood on the top of Azure Mound. Baxter was puffing heavily, for it
had been a hard climb.

At our feet extended a panorama of what seemed like a whole State.

The wide-spread fields of wheat, of corn, exalted us.

"God, what a glorious country!... no wonder Walt loved America ... in
spite of the abuses capital has perpetrated in it."

"Walt Mason?" I enquired, mischievously....

"No," he responded, seriously, "Walt Whitman."

"But our poet laureate to-day is Walt Mason ... and our State
philosopher, the sage of Potato Hill, Ed Howe, is an honest-to-God
stand-patter ... that's Kansas to-day for you, in spite of her wide,
scenic vistas....

"Nevertheless," I went on, "Kansas does develop marvellous people ... we
have Carrie Nation--"

"And Johnnie Gregory!" put in Baxter.

"I don't want just to belong to Kansas."

It was I who was humourless now, "I'm sick of its corn-fed bourgeois
ideals ... I want to belong to the world--as--you do!"

We trudged back to town.

"What a site for a university!... the men who put those buildings up
there on the Hill must have dreamed greatly ... look at the sun!... the
buildings are transfigured into a fairy city!"

* * * * *

My office as social manager for Baxter during his stay I conducted
badly. I was so excited and flattered by the visit of one whom I
considered one of the first geniuses of the world, that I hardly knew
what I was doing. I listened to all he said as if an oracle spoke.

I asked him if he would like to meet some of the professors on the
Hill.... I hurriedly gathered together a small group of them and Baxter
gave a talk to them in one of the unoccupied recitation ro