In the twilight we got to talking of oratory, which is one of the poet’s pet themes. He holds that pure oratory is natural poetry. Bryan is a poet; Patrick Henry was a poet; Daniel Webster was a poet. He enunciated various famous lines to me, trying to rouse the mountains with a sort of voice-of-God tone or air-bursting boom which the poet commands-- Lib-er-ty _and_ Un-i-on ... One ... and in-sep-ar-able ... Now ... and ... for-everrr! and he imitated Andrew Jackson saying--“_The Federal Union! It must and will be preserved!_” I found in the poet a curious creed, and that is, that oratory is better than logic. He preferred the warm glowing orator to the cold clear logician. He preferred Antony to Brutus, and put friendship above merit. He justified the “Solid South” in being solid. He justified Wilson for appointing his friends to power. He considered politics a matter not of theories but of friendships and family ties. He justified the spoils system to me. “When a man comes to power--he brings his clan to power, his friends, the people of the village, and that is much better than a collection of high-browed experts,” said he. He loathed detraction and personal attacks of any kind. The commonest laudatory adjective which he used to me in his conversations about his friends was the adjective “loyal.” I could not persuade him to talk critically of any of the literary work of his friends. “Any poet who is a friend of mine is a good poet!” cried Vachel more than once. “I’m _for_ him.” * * * * * WE came into view once more of fair Lake Josephine, but we could not make much headway. We were held by conversational webs. The poet was tired, and at every halting-place he started on some engrossing theme which beguiled us into spending half an hour sitting on dead trees. He was in the rôle of Scheherezade talking to her sultan. We ought to have plunged down to the lake-shore, built a big fire and dried off, but I was foolishly persistent in the idea of getting to the Many Glacier camp that night. Presently we started talking of Roosevelt, and the poet held me by the coat for a whole hour while he explained how he had been carried off his feet by a Republican, and had defied his family and voted for Roosevelt and had been struck out of the family Bible, so to speak. “I was for him until the end of his Presidency,” said Vachel. “He refused to give business and high finance the first place, he would not talk the holy gospel of tariff, he made the White House a national centre of culture, he gave a great progressive lead, and rallied to his banner the bright spirits of America; he hit the shams and the frauds and the trusts; he stood by the Negro; he was not afraid to express what he thought on any subject under the sun; he did not halt between yes and no, and he was the very opposite of the Adams type of politician.”