"I'm going to make it a sort of pilgrimage a-foot."
"Great! 'Vagabond Poet' Pilgrims to Home of Celebrated Kansan. It's only ninety miles to Osageville from here ... still rather cold of nights ... but you'll find plenty of shelter by the way ... start to-day and I can get the story in in time for this Sunday's Era...."
Travers got a camera from a fraternity brother.
"Come on, we'll walk up an alley and I'll snap you just as if you were on the way...."
"No, I won't do that!"
—"won't do what?"
—"won't fake it ... if you want a picture of me on the way, it will have to be on the way!"
"Of all the fools! Ain't the alleys muddy enough to be like the gumbo you'll have to plough through?" he teased. But I wouldn't allow him to take a fraudulent picture. He had to come with me, through the mud, grumbling, to the edge of town.
There, on the country road that led in the direction of Osageville, my feet rooted in gumbo, a sort of thick composite of clay and mud that clings to the feet in huge lumps, I had my photograph taken ... actually on the march toward my destination ... no hat on ... a copy of Keats in my hand.
Travers waved me good-bye. "You'll see the story in the Era Sunday sure," he shouted, in a tone half affection, half irony. I was nettled at the irony. I wanted it to be looked on as a quest entirely heroic.