Lindsay broadened his effects, developed the chant and, the following year, published his _The Congo and Other Poems_ (1914), an infectious blend of rhymes, ragtime and religion. In the title-poem and, in a lesser degree, the three companion chants, Lindsay struck his most powerful—and most popular—vein. They gave people (particularly when intoned aloud) that primitive joy in syncopated sound that is at the very base of song. In these experiments in breaking down the barriers between poetry and music, Lindsay (obviously infected by the echolalia of Poe’s “Bells”) tried to create what he called a “Higher Vaudeville” imagination, carrying the form back to the old Greek precedent where every line was half-spoken, half-sung. Lindsay’s innovation succeeded at once. The novelty, the speed, the clatter forced the attention of people who had never paid the slightest heed to the poet’s quieter verses. Men heard the _sounds_ of energetic America in these lines even when they were deaf to its spirit. They failed to see that, beneath the noise of “The Kallyope Yell” and “The Sante Fé Trail,” Lindsay was partly an admirer, partly an ironical critic of the shrieking energy of these states. By his effort to win the enemy over, Lindsay had persuaded the proverbially tired business man to listen at last. But, in overstressing the vaudeville features, there arose the danger of Lindsay the poet being lost in Lindsay the entertainer. The sympathetic and colorful studies of negro spirits and psychology (seen at their best in “The Congo,” “John Brown” and “Simon Legree”) degenerated into the crude buffooneries of “The Daniel Jazz” and “The Blacksmith’s Serenade.” But Lindsay’s earnestness, keyed up by an exuberant fancy, saved him. _The Chinese Nightingale_ (1917) begins with one of the most whimsical pieces Lindsay has ever devised. And if the subsequent _The Golden Whales of California_ (1920) is less distinctive, it is principally because the author has written too much and too speedily to be self-critical. It is his peculiar appraisal of loveliness, the rollicking high spirits joined to a stubborn evangelism, that makes Lindsay so representative a product of his environment. Besides his original poetry, Lindsay has embodied his experiences and meditations on the road in two prose volumes, _A Handy Guide for Beggars_ (1916) and _Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty_ (1914), as well as a prophetic study of the “silent drama,” _The Art of the Moving Picture_ (1915). THE EAGLE THAT IS FORGOTTEN[34] [_John P. Altgeld. Born December 30, 1847; died March 12, 1902_]