He let go his knife again, turned his face once more to the rain, through which the mountains were now emerging, and asked, “Do you know Loveman’s ‘Raining’ and how he wandered up from Georgia to find himself in New York City, his boat gone, or his money gone, or something gone--for he was someway stranded, I believe--and it was raining?” And the old man began-- “‘It isn’t raining rain to me, It’s raining daffodils; In every dimpled drop I see Wild flowers on the hills. The clouds of gray engulf the day, And overwhelm the town, It isn’t raining rain to me, It’s raining roses down.,’” while the rain across the hills, shot through with sunset light, fell all violets and clover-bloom and roses on the mountains and on the roof of Woodchuck Lodge. The thing on the box between us was utterly forgotten, but only for the moment. “Damn those fleas!” the old poet exploded, at the end of the recitation, swinging with both hands at his long white whiskers, “That ’chuck’s alive with fleas!” So I had observed; and I had been speculating, as I watched them quitting their sinking craft and boarding the sweeping beard of the poet, how many of them it might take to halt the flow of song. I was far off in my reckoning. Burroughs knocked them out and went on: “That’s a good poem because it goes straight to the heart. It’s an experience. He lived it. And its form is perfect. You can’t change a syllable in it. It’s on the old forms, yet it’s true to itself. And see how simple, direct, and sincere it is! and how lovely! I call that good poetry.” * * * * * We had been more than three hours getting the pelt off that woodchuck and all of the poetry out of him. As I sat by, I saw what I had hardly realized before: that the hand with the knife must often rest, though the eager mind seemed almost incapable of resting. The national elections were approaching, and from poetry we plunged into politics, where I feared we were bound to disagree, but where, to my surprise, I found we were standing together on the League of Nations, Burroughs having forsaken his party on that issue. “It’s the only thing!” he cried. “That’s what we fought for. Rob us of that, and the whole terrible sacrifice is futile--criminal!” And later, after my return home, he wrote me: “Well, the elections did not go as both of us had hoped. DeLoach was on the winning side, as I suppose all the great moneyed interests were. But thank heaven I am not in that crowd. If it means an utter repudiation of the League of Nations, then for the first time I am ashamed that I am an American. If I were in Europe I could not hold up my head and say, ‘I am from the United States!’ If we have failed to see ourselves as a member of the great family of nations, with solemn duties toward the rest of the world, to perform as such a member, then we have slumped morally as badly as did the Germans when they set out to enslave the rest of the world!”