Mrs. Barton was a terror. She was ever inviting to her house that kind of people who know somebody "worth while" or are related to somebody who, in their turn, are, perhaps, related to--somebody else!... In their presence she would patronise Barton by calling him "Stevie!" in her drawling, patronising manner.... When the woman came in among the tents and shacks of our "city" she would, in speaking with any of us, imply all sorts of mean, insinuating things about her reformer-husband.... Barton, they said, met her while on one of his lecture tours.... Their baby ... a little, red object like a boiled lobster ... the anonymous, undistinguished creatures all babies are at that time--the mother used to bring it in among us and coo and coo over it so ridiculously that we made her behaviour a joke among us. * * * * * Barton's secretary was a beautiful, gentle, large-eyed girl ... wholly feminine ... soft-voiced ... as a reaction from the nagging of his wife, from her blatancy and utter lack of sympathy with any of his projects, he insensibly drifted into a relationship closer and closer, with this girl ... they used to take long walks into the pines together ... and be observed coming back slowly out of the sunset ... hand in hand ... to drop each other's hands, when they considered that the observing line of vision had been reached. * * * * * Lying under my huge army tent, by the shore of pretty little Lake Emily, I dreamed long and often, in the hush of starry midnight, of reconstructing the life of the whole world--especially the love-life between men and women. Shelley was my God, not Christ. Shelley's notes to _Queen Mab_ were my creed, as his poetry and Whitman's furnished me my Bible. Through them I would reform the world! I had not realised then (as Shelley did not till his death), the terrific inertia of people, their content, even, with the cramping and conventional ideas and beliefs that hold them in unconscious slavery.... I think that summer I learned Shelley and Whitman by heart. And Keats was more than my creed. He comprised my life! Day by day I took care of my body, gaining in weight, filling out the hollows in my face, till I had grown into a presentable young man. For the first time in my life I knew the meaning of perfect health. Every atom of my blood tingled with natural happiness as I have felt it in later days, under the stimulation of good wine. No coffee, no tea, no beefsteak, no alcohol.... On that summer's ideal living I built the foundation of the health and strength, that, long after, I finally acquired as a permanent possession. * * * * *