"That makes it all the more terrible," I replied, "for if he wrote his verse-prose out of ignorance, he might be somewhat forgiven ... but he knows better."
I gave a lecture on Keats to a woman's club. They paid me thirty dollars for the lecture....
"Well, you surely made a killing ... those old birds will worship you for life," sniggered Ally.
Mackworth and I had a farewell talk before I returned to Laurel. We stood again in front of his office, on the sunny street ... he had come out to bid me good-bye.
We talked of the folk poetry of America.... Mackworth recited to me several of the songs and ballads which I have since seen in Lomax's book of Cowboy Songs.... I repeated the tale of how I had collected the jail-songs that I subsequently lost while jumping a freight....
"There's lots of poetry in American life ... Stephen Foster Collins scratched the surface of it ... but he was a song writer....
"There's poetry on farm, ranch, in small town, big city, all waiting for the transmuting touch of the true singer ... not newspaper rhymes ... neither the stock effusions on Night, Love, Death and Immortality inserted as tail-piece to stories and articles in magazines....
"There's the negro mind ...—ought to hear them sing, making up songs as they load and unload boats along the Mississippi ... nobody's ever dug back into the black mind yet—why don't you do these things?"...