MOBS are like the Gulf Stream, Like the vast Atlantic. In your fragile boats you ride, Conceited folk at ease. Far beneath are dancers, Mermen wild and frantic, Circling round the giant glowing Sea-anemones. “Crude, ill-smelling voters,-- Herds,” to you in seeming. But to me their draggled clothes Are scales of gold and red. Ah, the pink sea-horses, Green sea-dragons gleaming, And knights that chase the dragons And spear them till they’re dead! Wisdom waits the diver In the social ocean-- Rainbow shells of wonder, Piled into a throne. I would go exploring Through the wide commotion, Building under some deep cliff A pearl-throne all my own. Yesterday I dived there, Grinned at all the roaring, Clinging to the corals for a flash, Defying death. Mermen came rejoicing, In procession pouring, Yet I lost my feeble grip And came above for breath. I would be a merman. Not in desperation A momentary diver Blue for lack of air. But with gills deep-breathing Swim amid the nation-- Finny feet and hands forsooth, Sea-laurels in my hair. MACON THE languid town of Macon, Georgia, will ever remain in my mind as my first island of respite after vagrancy. My friend C. D. Russell lent me his clothes, took me to his eating-place, introduced his circle. We settled the destiny of the universe several different ways in peripatetic discourse. After one has ventured one hundred and fifty miles through everglades and spent twenty-four sleepless hours riding in freight-cabooses the marrow of his bones is marsh, his hair and clothes are moss, cinders and bark, his immortal soul is engine-smoke. Feeling just so, I had entered Russell’s law office. He was at court. I sent word by his partner that I had gone to school with him in Ohio, that I had mailed a postal last Sunday from Florida telling him I would arrive afoot in three weeks,--but here I was, already. The word was carried with Southern precision. “There is a person in the office who went to school with you in Indiana.” “I did not go to school in Indiana.” “He has been walking in Mississippi and Alabama. He wrote you a postal six weeks ago.” “How does he look?” “Like the devil. He is principally pants and shirt.” The cavalier knew who that was. He found me, took me to his castle, introduced civilization. CIVILIZATION is whiter than the clouds, and full of clear water. One enters it with a plunge. CULTURE is a fuzzy fabric with which one rubs in CIVILIZATION. After I had been intimate with these, I was admitted to SOCIETY: a suit of the cavalier’s clothes. I looked like him then, all but head and hands. I regarded myself with awe, as a gorilla would if he found himself fading into a Gibson picture.