Chamberlin, himself a "philosophical anarchist," was pleased with the individualistic note which ran through my harangue. The Single Taxers were of course, delighted for I admitted my discipleship to George, and my socialistic friends urged that the general effect of my argument was on their side. Altogether, for a penniless student and struggling story writer, I created something of a sensation. All my speeches thereafter helped to dye me deeper than ever with the color of reform.
However, in the midst of my Anti-Poverty Campaign, I did not entirely forget my fiction and my teaching. I was becoming more and more a companion of artists and poets, and my devotion to things literary deepened from day to day. A dreadful theorist in some ways, I was, after all, more concerned with literary than with social problems. Writing was my life, land reform one of my convictions.
High in my attic room I bent above my manuscript with a fierce resolve. From eight o'clock in the morning until half past twelve, I dug and polished. In the afternoon, I met my classes. In the evening I revised what I had written and in case I did not go to the theater or to a lecture (I had no social engagements) I wrote until ten o'clock. For recreation I sometimes drove with Dr. Cross on his calls or walked the lanes and climbed the hills with my brother.
In this way most of my stories of the west were written. Happy in my own work, I bitterly resented the laws which created millionaires at the expense of the poor.
These were days of security and tranquillity, and good friends thickened. Each week I felt myself in less danger of being obliged to shingle, though I still had difficulty in clothing myself properly.
Again I saw Booth play his wondrous round of parts and was able to complete my monograph which I called The Art of Edwin Booth. I even went so far as to send to the great actor the chapter on his Macbeth and received from him grateful acknowledgments, in a charming letter.
A little later I had the great honor of meeting him for a moment and it happened in this way. The veteran reader, James E. Murdock, was giving a recital in a small hall on Park Street, and it was privately announced that Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett would be present. This was enough to justify me in giving up one of my precious dollars on the chance of seeing the great tragedian enter the room.
He came in a little late, flushing, timid, apologetic! It seemed to me a very curious and wonderful thing that this man who had spoken to millions of people from behind the footlights should be timid as a maid when confronted by less than two hundred of his worshipful fellow citizens in a small hall. So gentle and kindly did he seem.
My courage grew, and after the lecture I approached the spot where he stood, and Mr. Barrett introduced me to him as "the author of the lecture on Macbeth."—Never had I looked into such eyes—deep and dark and sad—and my tongue failed me miserably. I could not say a word. Booth smiled with kindly interest and murmured his thanks for my critique, and I went away, down across the Common in a glow of delight and admiration.
In the midst of all my other duties I was preparing my brother Franklin for the stage. Yes, through some mischance, this son of the prairie had obtained the privilege of studying with a retired "leading lady" who still occasionally made tours of the "Kerosene Circuit" and who had agreed to take him out with her, provided he made sufficient progress to warrant it. It was to prepare him for this trip that I met him three nights in the week at his office (he was bookkeeper in a cutlery firm) and there rehearsed East Lynne, Leah the Forsaken, and The Lady of Lyons.