“You’re a good bit like Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling,” said Vachel to me at last, “You’ve a wonderful geographical background. You ought to read the life of Mark Twain. Very interesting. He was made by his life in Nevada. His life in the silver mining camps and his knowledge of the West and the South made him. Read _Roughing It_. It’s a great book. Then Kipling with a boyhood in India and a maturity in America owes much to his knowing both West and East. What’s the matter with young men to-day is a disinclination to get their feet dirty. You’re the only man in England or America I’ve been able to persuade to go on a tramp with me. When I proposed it to M----, the English poet, he seemed to turn pale. That’s all behind me,” he said, “though I don’t know what he meant.” * * * * * WE came within sight of the shore of Lake Josephine. “Shall we ask our invisible companion if he’d like to come in for a swim with us?” said I. “Why, that would be fine.” So we broke through to the green and silver lake and, putting our tender feet on the sharp stones and water-covered boulders, waded out to swimming depth and we made a great splash with Napoleon’s beautiful bride. And when we came we vagabondised on the shore for the rest of the day--the three of us--lying stretched out beside a mounting red blaze of rain-washed wood. The beach was all of little mauve stones which we raked into couches. And there we lay munching hot pea-nuts and rebuilding the world on a foundation of the American Wild West. Vachel drew some more world-maps and adopted our invisible playmate as a member of the society of “astrological geographers,” and we took for our emblem and device the map of the two hemispheres with the motto, “The World is My Parish.” What a serene evening it was by the side of fair Josephine! A half moon rose over us at nightfall and marsh hens sped through the air in volleying groups of wings. The stars and the moon threw a silver radiance on the line of the mountain-tops and on the forests and on the dimples and lines and circles of the lake. We fell asleep and were warm and at peace. We only waked at four in the morning and then bathed before sunrise and mingled our bodies with the perfect reflections of green and grey and brown and snowy mountain-sides. The sun arising grew upon us and chased wraith-like mists across the waters, and our fire, hotter than the sun, blazed on the mauve stones and baked us and dried us when we came out to it, and gave us our coffee and gave us all we needed till old Sol was radiant o’er the scene. [Illustration] _We know about Josephine What Napoleon did not know. He was too preoccupied sacking cities To love the beautiful altogether, Killing men, counting cannon, putting unneeded Crowns upon his brothers’ heads. He didn’t know much about her, O no! He said there were no more Alps, No more Pyrenees. He never said there were no more Rocky Mountains._