by J. C. Leyendecker.

"Simplicity," breathed Guilford--"a single
blossom against a background of nothing at all"
22
From a drawing by J. C. Leyendecker.

He paused; his six tall and blooming daughters,
two and two behind him
54
From a drawing by Karl Anderson.

Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting
on the harp-strings, suddenly contracted
in a nervous tremor
106
From a drawing by Karl Anderson.

_Decorative drawings by Arthur C. Becker._

[Illustration]

IOLE

I

[Illustration]

"I ain't never knowed no one like him," continued the station-agent
reflectively. "He made us all look like monkeys, but he was good to us.
Ever see a ginuine poet, sir?"

"Years ago one was pointed out to me," replied Briggs.

"Was yours smooth shaved, with large, fat, white fingers?" inquired the
station-agent.

"If I remember correctly, he was thin," said Briggs, sitting down on his
suit-case and gazing apprehensively around at the landscape. There was
nothing to see but low, forbidding mountains, and forests, and a
railroad track curving into a tunnel.

The station-agent shoved his hairy hands into the pockets of his
overalls, jingled an unseen bunch of keys, and chewed a dry grass stem,
ruminating the while in an undertone:

"This poet come here five years ago with all them kids, an' the fust
thing he done was to dress up his girls in boys' pants. Then he went an'
built a humpy sort o' house out of stones and boulders. Then he went to
work an' wrote pieces for the papers about jay-birds an' woodchucks an'
goddesses. He claimed the woods was full of goddesses. That was his way,
sir."

The agent contemplated the railroad track, running his eye along the
perspective of polished rails:

"Yes, sir; his name was--and is--Clarence Guilford, an' I fust seen it
signed to a piece in the Uticy Star. An' next I knowed, folks began to
stop off here inquirin' for Mr. Guilford. 'Is this here where Guilford,
the poet, lives?' sez they; an' they come thicker an' thicker in warm
weather. There wasn't no wagon to take 'em up to Guilford's, but they
didn't care, an' they called it a lit'r'y shrine, an' they hit the pike,
women, children, men--'speshil the women, an' I heard 'em tellin' how
Guilford dressed his kids in p