I would stop, he would draw level. “Now wait a minute,” he would say. “Let’s look back! What a wonderful view! Isn’t it a wonderful view? Let’s sit here awhile and take it in—a wonderful view!”
Or he would let me go on a bit and then stop me. “Stee-ven, look at the pine-tree, look at the giant tree, giant of the forest, look what a great giant! Let’s sit down and take it all in!”
In the twilight we got to talking of oratory, which is one of the poet’s pet themes. He holds that pure oratory is natural poetry. Bryan is a poet; Patrick Henry was a poet; Daniel Webster was a poet. He enunciated various famous lines to me, trying to rouse the mountains with a sort of voice-of-God tone or air-bursting boom which the poet commands—
Lib-er-ty and Un-i-on ...
One ... and in-sep-ar-able ...
Now ... and ... for-everrr!
and he imitated Andrew Jackson saying—“The Federal Union! It must and will be preserved!”
I found in the poet a curious creed, and that is, that oratory is better than logic. He preferred the warm glowing orator to the cold clear logician. He preferred Antony to Brutus, and put friendship above merit. He justified the “Solid South” in being solid. He justified Wilson for appointing his friends to power. He considered politics a matter not of theories but of friendships and family ties. He justified the spoils system to me. “When a man comes to power—he brings his clan to power, his friends, the people of the village, and that is much better than a collection of high-browed experts,” said he. He loathed detraction and personal attacks of any kind. The commonest laudatory adjective which he used to me in his conversations about his friends was the adjective “loyal.” I could not persuade him to talk critically of any of the literary work of his friends.
“Any poet who is a friend of mine is a good poet!” cried Vachel more than once. “I’m for him.”