"Penton, it is a matter of indifference to me where I put up. It was you who invited me to come to Eden ... but I won't mind staying at Community Inn, as I can only be with you for a couple of weeks, anyhow ... I'm due to take a cattleboat for Paris, for Europe, as soon as I have _Judas_ finished." * * * * * Supper ... veal steaks served on a plain board table outside the big house, under a tree. We waited on ourselves. We discussed Strindberg, his novels and plays ... his curious researches in science ... Nietzsche.... Afterward, having eaten off wooden plates, we flung the plates in the fireplace, burning them ... Ruth washed the knives, forks, spoons.... "It's such a saving of effort to use wooden plates and paper napkins ... so much less mere household drudgery ... so much more time for living saved." I had taken my suitcase and was about to repair to the much-discussed inn. But Penton asked me to wait, while he had a conference with the three women of the household. Soon he came out, smiling placidly and blandly. "Johnnie, I'm sorry about this afternoon ... I've been rather hasty, rather inhospitable ... you are not to go to the inn, but stay with us. The girls have persuaded me ... the tent, down beside the little house, is yours all summer, if you like." * * * * * I found the tent in a clump of trees ... it had a hard board floor, a wash-stand, table, chair, and cot. Along with the rest of the household, I retired early ... but not to sleep. I lit my big kerosene lamp and sat propped up with the pillows, reading, till late, the poetry of Norah May French, the beautiful, red-headed girl who had, like myself, also lived in Eos, where Roderick Spalton's Artworks were.... She had been, Penton informed me, when he handed me her book, one of the famous Bohemians of the San Francisco and Carmel art and literary crowd.... After a brief career of adventurous poverty, she had committed suicide over a love affair. Her poetry was full of beauty and spontaneity ... a grey mist dancing full of rainbows, like those you see at the foot of Niagara.... I must have read myself to sleep, for the lamp was still lit when I woke up early with the dawn ... it was the singing of the birds that woke me on my second day at Eden.... Working on farms, in factories, on ships at sea, being up at all hours to catch freights out of town had instilled in me the habit of early rising; I would have risen at dawn anyhow without the birds to wake me. Turning over for my pencil, which I ever keep, together with a writing pad, at my bedside, to catch the fleeting poetic inspiration, I indited a sonnet to Baxter (all copies of which I have unfortunately lost or I would give it here) in which I sang his praises as a great man of the same rank as Rousseau and Shelley.