I spoke ardently in favour of free love.
He assented that, theoretically, it was the thing ... but there were a multitude of practical difficulties that made for favour of the convention of marriage....
"No, if a convention is wrong, it is the duty of everyone who knows the right in his heart, to help smash that convention...."
"You just wait," I boasted imaginatively, "and I'll show you!" "Maybe, Joe," I concluded, for I knew what I said would tease him, "maybe, when I reach the East, I shall break loose." Then I added—and to this day I cannot imagine what put it into my head to say it—what fantastic curl of thought, unless perhaps a premonition of what was soon to come to pass—
"Penton Baxter has invited me to pay him a visit at Eden, a Single Tax Colony just outside of Philadelphia, before I go on to Europe via cattleboat ... maybe I'll take him up, go down there, and run away with his wife ... she's a mighty pretty woman, Joe!"
Joe was scandalised at my remark—the effect I had wished for.
But after the uproar broke, Joe stoutly maintained that our elopement had all been a frame-up, alleging his conversation with me as proof ... as who would have not?
Reduced again to my barest equipment, and having left as my forwarding address the office of the National Magazine, in New York, I hopped a freight shortly after dawn. It was a fast, through freight. Because of lack of practice I boarded it clumsily, and almost went to my death under its grinding, roaring wheels, there in the Laurel freight-yards. I sat, trembling with the shock to my nerves, on the bumpers.