As to his physical aspect, he was stockily built and about medium height, and his habit of body was what I should call plump, though later, under the stress of military drill, he changed somewhat in this last respect. I noted at once that he had a remarkable head--well rounded, with broad and high forehead and a very pronounced bulge at the back, covered thickly with dark, reddish-brown hair. But his eyes were his most remarkable feature. They were of the unusual colour of red, and they had a most peculiar quality which I can only inadequately suggest by saying that they literally glowed. It actually seemed as if there were a fire behind them, not a leaping and blazing fire, but a steady and unquenchable flame which appeared to suffuse the whole eyeball with a brooding light. This characteristic was so striking that I cannot help dilating on it. And I observed later on that this glow, this brooding and somewhat sombre light, never left his eyes even in his most weary or most care-free moments, so that they gave the impression of what I believe was the fact--the impression of a brain behind them which was working intensely and perhaps even feverishly every hour of the waking day. The better poet Kilmer became, as his friend Richardson Wright says in his admirable “Appreciation” in _The Bellman_, the less like a poet he acted. And after he grew up, he would about as soon have æstheticised, off the platform, as he would have forged a check. Whenever he did refer to poetry as related to himself he, as the slang term has it, took it smiling. One of Kilmer’s most pronounced pet aversions was the phrase, utterly mawkish to him, about “prostituting” one’s talent. He one time explained to me, with considerable apparent pride, that he used every idea three times: in a poem, in an article, and in a lecture. Charles Willis Thompson, an editorial writer of the _New York Times_, and to whom belongs the credit of first taking, as editor of the _Sunday Magazine_ and _Book Review_, Kilmer’s “stuff” in any amount, inspired, so to say, the poem “Delicatessen,” in this way. Mr. Thompson happened to remark to Kilmer that of course there were a lot of things which couldn’t be treated in poetry. Kilmer declared he would like to know what they were. Mr. Thompson cast about in his mind for the most ridiculous theme for a poem he could think of, and finally proclaimed that no one could possibly write a poem about such a thing as a delicatessen shop. “I’ll write a poem about a delicatessen shop,” Kilmer promptly replied. “It will be a long poem. I’ll sell it to a high-brow magazine. It will be much admired. And it will be a good poem.” He insisted on betting on this the sum of several dollars.