ADVENTURES WHILE PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF BEAUTY * * * _BY NICHOLAS VACHEL LINDSAY_ GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH ENTERS INTO HEAVEN ADVENTURES WHILE PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF BEAUTY * * * ADVENTURES WHILE PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF BEAUTY NICHOLAS VACHEL LINDSAY [Illustration] NEW YORK--MITCHELL KENNERLEY 1914 COPYRIGHT 1914 BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY _Printed in America_ DEDICATED TO MISS SARA TEASDALE CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. I START ON MY WALK 9 II. WALKING THROUGH MISSOURI 36 III. WALKING INTO KANSAS 62 IV. IN KANSAS: THE FIRST HARVEST 101 V. IN KANSAS: THE SECOND AND THIRD HARVEST 127 VI. THE END OF THE ROAD; MOONSHINE; AND SOME PROCLAMATIONS 154 Thanks are due the Crowell Publishing Company for permission to reprint the proclamations from _Farm and Fireside_ with which the book ends. Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty I _I Start on My Walk_ As some of the readers of this account are aware, I took a walk last summer from my home town, Springfield, Illinois, across Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, up and down Colorado and into New Mexico. One of the most vivid little episodes of the trip, that came after two months of walking, I would like to tell at this point. It was in southern Colorado. It was early morning. Around the cliff, with a boom, a rattle and a bang, appeared a gypsy wagon. On the front seat was a Romany, himself dressed inconspicuously, but with his woman more bedecked than Carmen. She wore the bangles and spangles of her Hindu progenitors. The woman began to shout at me, I could not distinguish just what. The two seemed to think this was the gayest morning the sun ever shone upon. They came faster and faster, then, suddenly, at the woman's suggestion, pulled up short. And she asked me with a fraternal, confidential air, "What you sellin', what you sellin', boy?" If we had met on the first of June, when I had just started, she would have pretended to know all about me, she would have asked to tell my fortune. On the first of June I wore about the same costume I wear on the streets of Springfield. I was white as paper from two years of writing poetry indoors. Now, on the first of August I was sunburned a quarter of an inch deep. My costume, once so respectable, I had gradually transformed till it looked like that of a show-man. I wore very yellow corduroys, a fancy sombrero and an oriflamme tie. So Mrs. Gypsy hailed me as a brother. She eyed my little worn-out oil-cloth pack. It was a delightful professional mystery to her.