"It's too bad you can't be a Single Taxer," he sighed. "I like you, Gregory, and I'd put you on my pension list if you'd only shift some of your fanaticism for poetry to the Single Tax cause."
Since then I have been frankly sorry that I did not play the hypocrite to Belton, in order to be put on a pension for several years. I might have achieved great verse during the leisure so afforded for calm, creative work.
I started a poetry club on the Hill.... I determined that it should be anarchistic in principle ... we should have no officials ... no dues ... not even a secretary to read dull minutes of previous meetings ... we should take turns presiding as chairman. And the membership was to be divided equally with girls.
But the school year had begun unhappily for me. I did not find Vanna there. I went to visit her homely roommate.
"Vanna has gone off to Arkansas ... she is teaching school down there for the winter."
"Thank God she's not married somebody!" I cried, forgetting, and giving myself away. Then Vanna Andrews' roommate saw at last that it was not she I was interested in. She gave way to invective.
"You! a worthless tramp like you! A crazy fool!... to dare even hope that Vanna Andrews would ever love you!" In a torrent of tears she asked me never to speak to her again.
I was sorry I had not procured Vanna's address before I had betrayed myself. But, anyhow, I wrote her a long letter and sent it in care of the university registrar.
Flamboyantly I confessed my love ... rehearsed the story of my worship of her from afar....