NICHOLAS VACHEL LINDSAY NEW YORK—MITCHELL KENNERLEY 1914 COPYRIGHT 1914 BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY Printed in America Dedicated to Miss Sara Teasdale CONTENTS Thanks are due the Crowell Publishing Company for permission to reprint the proclamations from Farm and Fireside with which the book ends. Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty...

As some of the readers of this account are aware, I took a walk last summer from my home town, Springfield, Illinois, across Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, up and down Colorado and into New Mexico. One of the most vivid little episodes of the trip, that came after two months of walking, I would like to tell at this point. It was in southern Colorado. It was early morning. Around the cliff, with a boom, a rattle and a bang, appeared a gypsy wagon. On the front seat was a Romany, himself dressed

Tuesday Morning, June 4, 1912. In a hotel bedroom in Laddonia, Missouri. I occupy this room without charge. Through the mercy of the gateman I crossed the Hannibal toll-bridge without paying fare, and the more enjoyed the pearly Mississippi in the evening twilight. Walking south of Hannibal next morning, Sunday, I was irresistibly reminded of Kentucky. It was the first real "pike" of my journey,—solid gravel, and everyone was exercising his racing pony in his racing cart, and giving me a ride do

It has been raining quite a little. The roads are so muddy I have to walk the ties. Keeping company with the railroad is almost a habit. While this shower passes I write in the station at Stillwell, Kansas. June 14, 1912. I have crossed the mystic border. I have left Earth. I have entered Wonderland. Though I am still east of the geographical centre of the United States, in every spiritual sense I am in the West. This morning I passed the stone mile-post that marks the beginning of Kansas. I wen

Monday Afternoon, July 1, 1912. A little west of Newton, Kansas. In the public library of a village whose name I forget. Here is the story of how I came to harvest. I was by chance taking a short respite from the sunshine, last Monday noon, on the porch of the Mennonite farmer. I had had dinner further back. But the good folk asked me to come in and have dessert anyway. It transpired that one of the two harvest hands was taking his farewell meal. He was obliged to fill a contract to work further

Two miles north of Great Bend. In the heart of the greatest wheat country in America, and in the midst of the harvest-time, Sunday, July 7, 1912. I am meditating on the ways of Destiny. It seems to me I am here, not altogether by chance. But just why I am here, time must reveal. Last Friday I had walked the ten miles from Ellinwood to Great Bend by 9 a.m. I went straight to the general delivery, where a package of tracts and two or three weeks' mail awaited me. I read about half through the lett

August 1, 1912. Standing up at the Postoffice desk, Pueblo, Colorado. Several times since going over the Colorado border I have had such a cordial reception for the Gospel of Beauty that my faith in this method of propaganda is reawakened. I confess to feeling a new zeal. But there are other things I want to tell in this letter. I have begged my way from Dodge City on, dead broke, and keeping all the rules of the road. I have been asked dozens of times by frantic farmers to help them at various