“Until to-day I had been without grub for sixty hours.  That is literally true.  I was ashamed of sponging on Paunchy, and could not bring myself to come back to the saloon where he would willingly have fed me.  I did get a job for two days as a deckhand on an Erie ferryboat, but they found out I did not belong to the union.  I had two dollars in my pocket—­a fortune—­but while I was dozing on a doorstep on Hudson Street, waiting for the cafes to open (I was too done to walk half a dozen blocks to an all-night restaurant), some snapper picked my pocket.  That night I slept in a big drain pipe where they were putting up a building.

“Why isn’t there a pawnshop where one could hang up MSS. for cash?  In my hallroom over Connor’s saloon I have got stuff that will be bid for at auctions some day (that isn’t conceit, I know it), but at this moment, July 17, 1908, I couldn’t raise 50 cents on it.  If there were a literary mount of piety—­a sort of Parnassus of piety as it were—­the uncle in charge might bless the day he met me.  Well, it won’t be for long.  This cancer is getting me surely.

“This morning I’m cheerful.  I’ve scrubbed and swept Paunchy’s bar for him, and the dirty, patchouli-smelling hop-joint he keeps upstairs, bless his pimping old heart.  And I’ve had a real breakfast:  boiled red cabbage, stewed beef (condemned by the inspector), rye bread, raw onions, a glass of Tom and Jerry, and two big schooners of the amber.  I’m working on my Third Avenue novel called ‘The L.’

“I shan’t give you my right address, or you’d send someone down here to give me money, you damned philanthropist....  Connor ain’t the real name, so there.  When I die (soon) they’ll find Third Avenue written on my heart, if I still have one....”

It is interesting to recall that the MS. of his poems “Pavements, and Other Verses” was bought by a private collector for $250 last winter.

Will not some literary agent think over this idea?

A MORNING IN MARATHON

One violet throbbing star was climbing in the southeast at half-past four, and the whole flat plain was rich with golden moonlight.  Early rising in order to quicken the furnace and start the matinsong in the steampipes becomes its own reward when such an orange moon is dropping down the sky.  Even Peg (our most volatile Irish terrier) was plainly awed by the blaze of pale light, and hopped gingerly down the rimy back steps.  But the cat was unabashed.  Cats are born by moonlight and are leagued with the powers of darkness and mystery.  And so Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (he is named for the daring poet of Illinois) stepped into the moonshine without a qualm.