The truth was, spring was coming on. Spring affects me as it does migratory fowls. With its first effort of meadow and bough toward renewed flowers and greenness, the instinct for change and adventure stirs anew in me.
The school year was not yet up, but I didn't want to graduate.
At that time I had a passion for meeting well-known people.
It was then my only avenue of literary publication, so to speak. The magazines were steadily returning my deluge of poems—I sent at least three a week to them ... but to those who had established themselves I could show my work, and get their advice and notice....
Walking along the main street, I ran into Jack Travers, the young reporter who had dubbed me the "Vagabond Poet," the "Box-car Bard."...
"Well, what are you up to now, Gregory?"
"Nothing, only I'm thinking of a trip south to Osageville to pay a visit to Mackworth, the Kansas novelist."
"That's the stuff ... I need another good story for the Era."