You cahn have no feelin’s for the view
Huhhyin’ on so fass—
(Tired Feet Blues)
SHE SENT MORE RAIN AND LAUGHED AGAIN
XXVII. THE WILLOWS
When I was at Springfield I was brought before the children of the High School, where in years past the poet went to school, two thousand children in a grand auditorium. I think we could show nothing of the kind in England, an assembly of nearly all the boys and girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen in the city—white children, black children, immigrant European children promiscuously grouped, bright-faced and vivacious and feeling all-together. I was to speak to them on Russia, but before my turn came the school did twenty minutes’ practice at the school-yell. For there was a ball-match on the morrow, and as a young orator cried out to them, “We are going to win to-morrow. If the school is behind us we’ll win.”
The leaders of the school-yell came out of their seats, and they leapt like Indians and flung their arms about and writhed and appealed and struck the floor with the palms of their hands and appealed again. Thus they gave “The Locomotive Yell,” which reminded me of the voice of the Purple Emperor Express in Kipling’s locomotive story “.007.” Thus they imitated a great steam-engine under full pressure of steam, laboriously and mightily and then victoriously roaring forth from the Grand Terminal—
Rah ... rah ... rah ... rah—
Spring ... field ... High ... School