Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of BeautyLindsay, Vachel
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Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty
Lindsay, Vachel
Lindsay, Vachel, 1879-1931 -- Travel -- United States; United States -- Description and travel; Walking -- United States
Yesterday I could lift three moderate-sized sheaves on the run. This
morning I could hardly lift one, walking. This noon the foreman of the
ranch, the man who, with his brother, disciplined the broncho, was
furiously angry with me, because, as I plainly explained, I was
getting too much sun and wanted a bit of a rest. He inquired, "Why
didn't you tell me two days ago you were going to be overcome by the
heat, so I could have had a man ready to take your place?" Also, "It's
no wonder dirty homeless men are walking around the country looking
for jobs." Also, a little later: "I have my opinion of any man on
earth who is a quitter."
But I kept my serenity and told him that under certain circumstances I
was apt to be a quitter, though, of course, I did not like to overdo
the quitting business. I remained unruffled, as I say, and handed him
and his brother copies of _The Gospel of Beauty_ and _Rhymes to Be
Traded for Bread_ and bade them good-bye. Then I went to town and told
the local editor on them for their horse-killing, which, I suppose,
was two-faced of me.
The tenant's attitude was perfectly absurd. Hands are terribly scarce.
A half day's delay in shocking that wheat would not have hurt it, or
stopped the reaper, or altered any of the rest of the farm routine. He
fired me without real hope of a substitute. I was working for
rock-bottom wages and willing to have them docked all he pleased if
he would only give me six hours to catch up in my tiredness.
Anyway, here I am in the Saddlerock Hotel, to which I have paid in
advance a bit of my wages, in exchange for one night's rest. I enclose
the rest to you. I will start out on the road to-morrow, bathed,
clean, dead broke and fancy free. I have made an effort to graduate
from beggary into the respectable laboring class, which you have so
often exhorted me to do.
I shall try for employment again, as soon as I rest up a bit. I
enjoyed the wheat and the second-hand reaper, and the quaintness of my
employers and all till the death of Richard the Lion-Hearted.
I am wondering whether I ought to be as bitter as I am against the
horse-killers. We cannot have green fields just for bronchos to gambol
in, or roads where they can trot unharnessed and nibble by the way. We
must have Law and Order and Discipline.
But, thanks to the Good St. Francis who marks out my path for me, I
start to-morrow morning to trot unharnessed once again.
SUNDAY, JULY 14, 1912. In front of the general store at Wright,
Kansas, which same is as small as a town can get.
I have been wondering why Destiny sent me to that farm where the
horse-killers flourished. I suppose it was that Dick might have at
least one mourner. All the world's heroes are heroes because they had
the qualities of constancy and dancing gameness that brought him to
his death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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