* * *

"I can't help you any more," observed Belton to me, as we sat in the
lobby of the Coates House where he was putting up.

"Who the hell's asking you to help me?" I replied. "I came down from
Laurel with no ulterior motive; I came just to pay you a visit, and to
thank you personally for giving me six months of freedom from economic
worry while I wrote my fairy drama ... anyhow, please remember that it
wasn't me you helped, but Poetry!"

"It's too bad you can't be a Single Taxer," he sighed. "I like you,
Gregory, and I'd put you on my pension list if you'd only shift some of
your fanaticism for poetry to the Single Tax cause."

Since then I have been frankly sorry that I did not play the hypocrite
to Belton, in order to be put on a pension for several years. I might
have achieved great verse during the leisure so afforded for calm,
creative work.

* * * * *

I started a poetry club on the Hill.... I determined that it should be
anarchistic in principle ... we should have no officials ... no dues ...
not even a secretary to read dull minutes of previous meetings ... we
should take turns presiding as chairman. And the membership was to be
divided equally with girls.

But the school year had begun unhappily for me. I did not find Vanna
there. I went to visit her homely roommate.

"Vanna has gone off to Arkansas ... she is teaching school down there
for the winter."

"Thank God she's not married somebody!" I cried, forgetting, and giving
myself away. Then Vanna Andrews' roommate saw at last that it was not
she I was interested in. She gave way to invective.

"You! a worthless tramp like you! A crazy fool!... to dare even hope
that Vanna Andrews would ever love _you_!" In a torrent of tears she
asked me never to speak to her again.

I was sorry I had not procured Vanna's address before I had betrayed
myself. But, anyhow, I wrote her a long letter and sent it in care of
the university registrar.

Flamboyantly I confessed my love ... rehearsed the story of my worship
of her from afar....

For a month, every day, I sent her a bulky envelope full of mad verse
and declarations of undying love. As the letters were not being
returned, she must be receiving them.

One morning, with trembling hands and a pounding heart that nearly bore
me down, it acted so like a battering ram on the inside, I drew a
delicately scented envelope from my mailbox ... addressed in a daint