contributed to his own growing conviction that orthodox economics had served its day.  And how he gloried in that reading!  It had been years since he had been able to do anything but just keep up with his daily lectures, such was the pressure he was working under.  Bless his heart, he was always coming across something that was just too good to hold in, and I would hear him come upstairs two steps at a time, bolt into the kitchen, and say:  “Just listen to this!” And he would read an extract from some new-found treasure that would make him glow.

But outside of myself,—­and I was only able to keep up with him by the merest skimmings,—­and one or two others at most, there was no one who understood what he was driving at.  As his reading and convictions grew, he waxed more and more outraged at the way Economics was handled in his own University.  He saw student after student having every ounce of intellectual curiosity ground out of them by a process of economic education that would stultify a genius.  Any student who continued his economic studies did so in spite of the introductory work, not because he had had one little ounce of enthusiasm aroused in his soul.  Carl would walk the floor with his hands in his pockets when kindred spirits—­especially students who had gone through the mill, and as seniors or graduates looked back outraged at certain courses they had had to flounder through—­brought up the subject of Economics at the University of California.

Off he went then on his pilgrimage,—­his Research Magnificent,—­absolutely unknown to almost every man he hoped to see before his return.  The first stop he made was at Columbia, Missouri, to see his idol Veblen.  He quaked a bit beforehand,—­had heard Veblen might not see him,—­but the second letter from Missouri began, “Just got in after thirteen hours with Veblen.  It went wonderfully and I am tickled to death.  He O.K.s my idea entirely and said I could not go wrong. . . .  Gee, but it is some grand experience to go up against him.”

In the next letter he told of a graduate student who came out to get his advice regarding a thesis-subject in labor.  “I told him to go to his New England home and study the reaction of machine-industry on the life of the town.  That is a typical Veblen subject.  It scared the student to death, and Veblen chuckled over my advice.”  In Wisconsin he was especially anxious to see Guyer.  Of his visit with him he wrote:  “It was a whiz of a session.  He is just my meat.”  At Yale he saw Keller.  “He is a wonder and is going to do a lot for me in criticism.”

Then began the daily letters from New York, and every single letter—­not only from New York but from every other place he happened to be in:  Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cambridge—­told of at least one intellectual Event—­with a capital E—­a day.  No one ever lived who had a more stimulating experience.  Friends would ask me:  “What is the news from Carl?” And I would just gasp.  Every letter was so full of the new influences coming into his life, that it was impossible to give even an idea of the history in the making that was going on with the Parkers.