"I wonder what they'll say back in Kansas!" I had exclaimed to Hildreth, in the hearing of the reporters.
"Oh, bother Kansas!" replied Hildreth humorously.
For a month "I wonder what they'll say back in Kansas" was a catch-word for Broadway and the town.
When the Evening Journal put us in their "Dingbat Family" I enjoyed the humour of it. But Hildreth was angry and aggrieved.
"You and Penton," remarked she, "for men of culture and sensibility, have bigger blind spots than ordinary in your make-up. Why, Johnnie, I believe you enjoy the comic pictures about this business!...
"The only way to conduct propaganda for a cause is through the dignified medium of books, I am rapidly becoming convinced—not through newspaper interviews; which, when they are not silly, are insulting."
Baxter's lawyer soon put a stop to our public amicability ... "collusion," he warned Penton; "they'll call it collusion and you won't get your final decree."
Tad drew cartoons of us ... a cluster of them ... "Silk Hat Harry's Divorce Suit" ... with dogs' heads on all of us ... Hildreth, with the head of a hound dog, long hound-ears flopping, with black jade ear-rings in them ... Penton, a woe-begone little pug....
A box car loomed in the centre of the main picture, "The Affinity Nest of the Hobo Poet," I think it was legended ... then I was drawn standing, one leg crossed over the other, the peak of the toe jauntily resting on the ground, hand-in-breast like an old-fashioned picture. There was a tin can thrown over the shoulder of the tattered bulldog that represented me ... one of my ears went through my hat ... beneath, a rhyme ran: