Tramping on Life: An Autobiographical NarrativeKemp, Harry
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Tramping on Life: An Autobiographical Narrative
Kemp, Harry
Kemp, Harry, 1883-1960
"Jim, who put you up to this?"
"The people what saw you lying here, as they drove in, stopped off at
the office of the _Globe_ ... it was 'Senator' Blair telephoned the
courthouse--"
"Blair, eh?... trying to get even for what we boys did with his dirty
paper ... he knows I like to lie out here and read my books of poetry!"
I was thoroughly aroused. I jumped to my feet.
"Jim, do me a favour, and arrest me ... and I'll sue you, the city of
Laurel, and 'Senator' Blair ... all three of you!"
"--guess I won't do it ... but _do_ sit on the bench ... I ask it as a
personal favour, Johnnie."
"As a personal favour, Jim, till you are out of sight. Then I'll go back
to the grass."
That night Blair, cocksure, had the story of my arrest in the paper.
But, as it happened, he was too previous....
Jerome Miller and Jack Travers joined me in going to the office of the
_Globe_, the next morning....
After we had finished telling him what we thought of him, the "Senator"
begged my pardon profusely, and the next day a retraction was
printed....
* * * * *
And now school was over at Laurel.
And I determined to bum my way to New York, and, from there, ship on a
cattleboat to Europe. Where I would finish writing my play, _Judas_.
Farewell to Laurel!--
I went up to the athletic field and ran my last two miles on its track,
at top speed, as good-bye to its cinders forever!
I walked, with a guilty feeling of too much sentimentality, back into
the "stack" at the university library. I took down book after book of
the great English poets, and pressed my cheek to them in long farewell
... first glancing cautiously around, to be sure that no one was near to
observe my actions....
I did not say good-bye to Langworth or my other professor friends, as
they had already left for their summer vacations.
* * * * *
I sat in Joe Deacon's room, talking, that last night of my sojourn in
Laurel....
"Good old Joe" we called him, because he was possessed of all the
old-fashioned virtues, and unassumingly lived up to them. He was a
fellow member of the Scoop Club, an associate teacher in the School of
Journalism, and taught during the summer session....
Long, long Joe and I talked ... of everything young idealists discuss or
dream of. We ended with a discussion of the sex question. I reiterated
what he already had heard me say, that I had had so far no sex
experience. He confessed that he, also, had had none ... maintained that
a decent man should wait, if he expected a woman to come pure to him....
I spoke ardently in favour of free love.
He assented that, theoretically, it was the thing ... but there were a
multitude of practical difficulties that made for favour of the
convention of marriage....
"No, if a convention is wrong, it is the duty of everyone who knows the
right in his heart, to help smash that convention...."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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