We had supper that evening in a great, open mountain space, with glaciers as large as cities brooding and impending over abysses, and we looked downward to dark and gloomy rising forests gone tired on their way up towards us, and we looked upwards to the grandeur of snow-covered crags and tumultuous, heaven-climbing waves of rock. Vachel fried the beans to an accompaniment of rhythmical remarks. Poetry possessed us both. All about us was in grand, romantic, heroic strain. Vachel remarked how the forests were like harps with long harp strings, and the strings were the lines which mountain stones and avalanches had furrowed there for ages. The carpet on which we lay was of yellow vetches and dark-blue gentians, with lichened stones all interspersed. Heaven itself was not flat-roofed above us, but raised at the zenith, a blue vault above us, like the dome of a world-temple. And the fire burned a black patch on the green and puffed and flamed symbolically as if we were children of the Old Testament sacrificing there to our God. [Illustration] _Two stars arose above the mountain’s head, Two stars looked down upon the world in bed; Looked through the window-panes and saw the world at home, From Babylon to Tyre, and Rome to Rome. What if the stars, lifting their tiny lamps, Were but like us, a couple of old tramps? Heaven’s tramps the stars, blazing their trails they go, From mountain-top to mountain-top and snow to snow._ [Illustration: ‘I HAD RATHER BE A PEACOCK THAN A HOG’ SAID THE PEACOCK] XX. BY THE CAMP FIRE MANY years ago one of the Springfield newspapers offered a prize to the reader who should send in the best answer to the question: _What would you do with a million dollars?_ Young Vachel sent in an answer. His was: “I would change them to dimes and have them thrown into the State House yard and any one who wanted them could come and take as much as he liked.” The answer was printed in the paper with a lot of others and gave considerable offence. The telephone was kept busy that morning by those who thought fit to tell his father and mother that they ought to look after him better and not let him make a fool of himself.