"But our poet laureate to-day is Walt Mason ... and our State philosopher, the sage of Potato Hill, Ed Howe, is an honest-to-God stand-patter ... that's Kansas to-day for you, in spite of her wide, scenic vistas....
"Nevertheless," I went on, "Kansas does develop marvellous people ... we have Carrie Nation—"
"And Johnnie Gregory!" put in Baxter.
"I don't want just to belong to Kansas."
It was I who was humourless now, "I'm sick of its corn-fed bourgeois ideals ... I want to belong to the world—as—you do!"
We trudged back to town.
"What a site for a university!... the men who put those buildings up there on the Hill must have dreamed greatly ... look at the sun!... the buildings are transfigured into a fairy city!"
My office as social manager for Baxter during his stay I conducted badly. I was so excited and flattered by the visit of one whom I considered one of the first geniuses of the world, that I hardly knew what I was doing. I listened to all he said as if an oracle spoke.
I asked him if he would like to meet some of the professors on the Hill.... I hurriedly gathered together a small group of them and Baxter gave a talk to them in one of the unoccupied recitation rooms. Nor did he fail in telling them that in me Kansas had a great poet in the making ... the professors who were not invited to my hasty reception considered themselves slighted.