"Why, Johnnie, what's the matter? you're walking like an old man. Brace up. Is anything wrong?" "No, I was just thinking." * * * * * The first cold blasts of winter howled down upon us. No snow yet, but winds that rushed about the buildings on the hill, full of icy rain, and with a pushing strength like the shoulders of invisible giants out of the fourth dimension ... we men kept on the sidewalks when we could ... but the winds blew the girls off into the half-hardened mud, and, at times, were so violent, that the girls could not extricate themselves, but they stood still, waiting for help, their skirts whirling up into their very faces. It was what the boys called "a sight for sore eyes." They stood in droves, in the sheltered entrances of the halls, and occasionally darted out by ones and twos and threes to rescue distressed co-eds. * * * * * Down in the room over the tin and plumbing shop in which I lived, I found it cold indeed. I could afford no heat ... and, believing in windows open, knew every searching drop in the barometer. But never in my life was I happier, despite my secretly cherished love for Vanna. For I assured myself in my heart of certain future fame, the fame I had dreamed of since childhood. And I wore every hardship as an adornment, conscious of the greatness of my cause. Isolation; half-starvation; cold; inadequate clothing;--all counted for the glory of poetry, as martyrs had accepted persecution and suffering for the glory of God. My two hours of daily work irked me. I wanted the time for my writing and studying ... but I still continued living above the din of the shop that I had grown accustomed to, by this time. Rarely, when the nights were so subarctic as to be almost unbearable, did I slip down through the skylight and seek out the comparative warmth of the shop ... and there, on the platform where the desk stood so that it could overlook all the store, I wrote and studied. But Randall said this worried the night watchman too much, my appearing and disappearing, all hours of the night. He didn't relish coming every time to see if the store was being burglarised. * * * * * The outside world was beginning to notice me. My poems, two of which I had sold to the _Century_, two to _Everybody's_, and a score to the _Independent_, were, as soon as they appeared in those magazines, immediately copied by the Kansas newspapers. And the Kansas City _Star_ featured a story of me at Laurel, playing up my freaks and oddities ... but accompanied by a flattering picture that "Con" Cummins, our college photographer, had taken. Also I was receiving occasional letters from strangers who had read my poems. But they were mostly letters from cranks ... or from girls very, very young and sentimental, or on the verge of old-maidhood, who were casting about for some escape from the narrow daily life that environed them....