I have met many a man in my wanderings, simple and silent, who felt beauty like a poet or an artist, without the poet's or artist's gifts of expression,—with, on the contrary, a queer shame that he was so moved, a suspicion that, somehow, it was not manly to be moved by a sunrise or sunset.
I found Penton Baxter, his wife Hildreth, and their child, Dan, living in two tents, among a grove of trees, near the main building of the Health Home. These two tents had, of course, board floors, and there was a woman who kept them in condition ... and there was a rack for towels, and hot water was supplied by pipes from a nearby building. I think the tents were even wired for electric light.
Baxter welcomed me. But I took a room for a week in town, though he urged me to stay with him. But when I had the means I liked better to be independent. I calculated living a week in Warriors' River for ten or twelve dollars. That would leave me thirty dollars over, from what I had earned while working on the Overland.
Then, back to the university for my last year of leisurely study and reading, in the face of the desolate poverty that would have defeated many another man, but to which I was used as a customary condition. After that—Paris or London, or both! Kansas was growing too small for me.
I have mentioned that Baxter had a head too large for his body. Daniel, his son, slight and frail and barely eight years of age, possessed the same characteristic....
I footed it out to Baxter's tents, faithfully as to a shrine, each afternoon. The mornings he and I both occupied in writing. He, on a novel which was the story of the love-life of his wife and himself, and of his literary struggles, called Love's Forthfaring; I, on my abortive songs of the Great Lakes that all came forth still-born ... because I was yet under the vicious literary influence of the National Magazine, and was writing my verse, trying to be inspired by the concepts of middle-class morality ... or what was even worse, I was attempting to glorify the under-dog; who, if he were the demigod Socialists portray him, would by no means remain the under-dog.
I found Baxter more a-flame than ever for the utter reformation of mankind ... in the way they dressed ... stiff collars hurt the nervous system, pressing as they did, on the spine ... in the books they read ... he wished to start a library that would sell cheaply and bring all the world's great thought and poetry into factory, and every worker's home ... all conventional ideas of marriage and religion must go by the board and freedom in every respect be granted to men and women.