“In that case,” I retorted, “I’ll not drink to the President.” But Vachel had become preoccupied and began an unending chant of Patrick Henry’s oration, Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, As to be purchased by chains and slavery-- I don’t care for others, but as for myself Give me liberty or give me death! No doubt he did not quote it quite correctly, but I fastened on the third line, which I repeated deliberately after him, “I--do--not--care--for--others,” until he was once more moved to mirth and got down from what in one poem he has called: The old Elijah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist soap-box; The Rousseau, Mirabeau, Danton soap-box; The Karl Marx, Henry George, and Woodrow Wilson soap-box. And we washed off our politics from our minds at high noon in a river. And Vachel sat astride of a giant tree that had fallen across the stream, and luxuriating in the heat he cried out to me, “Gosh, Stephen, I’m a sun-worshipper with my shirt off!” [Illustration] _Quit drinking coffee Before it’s everlastingly too late; Be not found among the coffee-bibbers! Silence those profane toasts To Noah’s offspring and Patrick Henry. Oh, Uncle Sam, See how thy children go To the devil--drinking coffee! O prohibit it!_ [Illustration: THE BIRD CATCHETH THE EAR OF THE PRIMITIVE MAN] XXIV. TWO VOICES MY companion has two voices: one is that of a politician, harsh and strident, the other is that of a Homeric harper and ballad-chanter of the days of old. The political voice does not please me much. It is the voice of the “hell-roarer” of the prairies. Lindsay loves a mighty shout, an exultant war-whoop for its own sake, like any Indian. And ... I’ve heard those “glacier boulders across the prairies rolled.” I have heard the “gigantic troubadour speaking like a siege-gun.” But there is another voice-- Two voices: One was of the deep, The other of a poor old silly sheep. And ... both were thine! as G. W. Steevens once wrote. The other voice is truly of the deep; sonorous and golden, murmuring, and with eternity dreaming in it. That is the voice of the poet. Some days with us were naturally dedicated to poetry. The steps on the mountains caught the rhythms, the gliding waterfalls and the intensely coloured listening flowers suggested the mood of the poets, and then the peaks, the grandeur, uplifted Lindsay’s spirit. The hymns were silenced. Silence hung on the mute figures of Bryan and Altgelt. We let Roosevelt sleep on. American and European civilisation ceased to fill the mind, and there was only the mountains and poetry. Vachel knew by heart whole books, and he crooned and chanted as we walked, and lifted his head up to the snows and the waterfalls and the skies. He has a bird-like face when he recites; his eyes almost close, his lips purse up and open like a thrush’s beak. He glories in the word of poesy, and entirely forgets himself--