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
Some day I shall hunt up the right kind of a Hindu and pay him filthy
gold and have him send the ghost of Dick to those wretched men. They
will be unable to move, lying with eyes a-staring all night long.
Dreadful things will happen in that room, dreadful things the Hindu
shall devise after I have told him what the broncho endured. They
shall wake in the morning, thinking it all a dream till they behold
the horse-shoe prints all over the counterpane. Then they will try to
sit up and find that their ribs are broken--well, I will leave it to
the Hindu.
I have been waiting many hours at this town of Wright. To-day and
yesterday I made seventy-six miles. Thirty-five of these miles I made
yesterday in the automobile of the genial and scholarly Father A. P.
Heimann of Kinsley, who took me as far as that point. I have been
loafing here at Wright since about four in the afternoon. It is nearly
dark now. Dozens of harvesters, already engaged for the week, have
been hanging about and the two stores have kept open to accommodate
them. There is a man to meet me here at eight o'clock. I may harvest
for him four days. I told him I would not promise for longer. He has
taken the train to a station further east to try to get some men for
all week. If he does not return with a full quota he will take me on.
While I am perfectly willing to work for two dollars and a half, many
hold out for three.
The man I am waiting for overtook me two miles east of this place. He
was hurrying to catch his train. He took me into his rig and made the
bargain. He turned his horse over to me and raced for the last car as
we neared the station. So here I am a few yards from the depot, in
front of the general store, watching the horse of an utter stranger.
Of course the horse isn't worth stealing, and his harness is half
twine and wire. But the whole episode is so careless and free and
Kansas-like.
Most of the crowd have gone, and I am awfully hungry. I might steal
off the harness in the dark, and eat it. Somehow I have not quite the
nerve to beg where I expect to harvest. I am afraid to try again in
this fight with the sun, yet when a man overtakes me in the road and
trusts me with his best steed and urges me to work for him, I hardly
know how to refuse.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 21, 1912. Loafing and dozing on my bed in the
granary on the farm near Wright, Kansas, where I have been harvesting
a full week.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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