At six o’clock I was called for breakfast. My sulphur-smelling clothes were on my bed. I put them on with a light heart, for after all I had slept well, and my feet were not stiff. The quarter was still in my trousers’ pocket. I presume that hoodoo quarter had something to do with the bad breakfast.
The Amphibian was now cook. He gave each man a soup-plate heaped with oat-meal. If it had been oats, it would have been food for so many horses. Had the Frog been up since four-thirty preparing this?
The price of part of that horse-feed might have gone into something to eat. There was a salty blue sauce on it that was called milk. And there was dry bread to be had, without butter, and as much bad coffee as a man could drink.
A person called the bookkeeper arrived with the janitor. I made my formal farewells to those representatives of the law, before whom the Amphibian melted with humility. The scalawag who had bathed with me tipped me a wink, and tried to escape in my company. But I bade him good-by so firmly that the authorities noticed, and the brash creature remained glued to his chair. He probably had to do his full share of kindling before he escaped.
I went forth from that place into the highway of our God, who dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all men life and breath and all things.
I said in my heart: “I shall walk on and on and find a better, a far holier shrine than this at the ends of the infinite earth.”
THE TOWN OF AMERICAN VISIONS
(Springfield, Illinois)
Is it for naught that where the tired crowds see
Only a place for trade, a teeming square,
Doors of high portent open unto me