Tramping on Life Part 90

I found Baxter more a-flame than ever for the utter reformation of mankind ... in the way they dressed ... stiff collars hurt the nervous system, pressing as they did, on the spine ... in the books they read ... he wished to start a library that would sell cheaply and bring all the world's great thought and poetry into factory, and every worker's home ... all conventional ideas of marriage and religion must go by the board and freedom in every respect be granted to men and women.

It was good to listen to this sincere, nave man, still young ... who would re-make life nearer to the beauty and harmony that Sh.e.l.ley also dreamed for mankind. I lived in a state of perpetual reverence toward Baxter. This man tried to live his ideals, as well as write about them.

In matters of diet I accepted Baxter's theories but, humanly, did not live up to them. He was a vegetarian.

Later I was to learn that he was to himself an experiment station. On his own person he directly and practically tried out each idea ... his wife was also a convertee, slightly reluctant, to his tests ... and his son, perforce. Baxter actually kept a vegetarian dog. "Even carnivorous animals thrive better on a vegetarian diet." But the dog was no corroboration of his theory. It lacked gloss and s.h.i.+ne to its coat, and seldom barked.

One afternoon I came upon Dan, Baxter's son, puking in the bushes, not far from the tents.

"What's the matter, Dan," he turned to me, wan, and serious, and with a grown-up look on his face.

"Nothing! Only sometimes the warm milk father has me drink makes me throw up. I'm on a milk diet, you know."

"Does your father know that you can't keep the milk down?"

"Mostly it does stay down ... I guess father's all right," he defended, "maybe the diet will do me good."

"Do you ever get a beefsteak?"

"Father says meat is no good ... maybe he's right about killing animals.

He says it wouldn't be half so bad if everyone killed their own meat, instead of making brutes out of men who do the killing for them ... but it is kind of hard on the dog, though," and the little fellow laughed.

"I think my boy is going to become an engineer of some sort; he's always playing about with machinery," Penton said to me....

"Suppose you let him take a trip with me to town, then? I'm going to look through the Best o' Wheat factory this afternoon, and watch how Best o' Wheat biscuits are made. Perhaps he'd like to see the machinery working!"

"Johnnie, I'll trust him with you, if you'll promise me not to meddle with his diet."

"Of course."

"I don't like people stuffing him full of candy and ice cream. I want to bring him up with a good digestion and sound teeth."

Daniel took my hand as we went through the factory from department to department. I enjoyed a paternal pride in the handsome, pale, preternaturally intelligent little fellow.

"Look at the young father!" exclaimed one girl softly to another, with a touch of pathos in her voice, intimating that perhaps I was a widower.

I blushed with pleasure to the tips of my ears, to be thought the father of so prepossessing a child.

It delighted him to look into the huge bake ovens where first the wheat was baked in big brown loaves, before it was broken up into biscuit form. I thought of Hank Spalton and how he was supposed to have grown strong on a diet of Best o' Wheat.

It was customary to serve sight-seers, in a dining room kept for that purpose, with Best o' Wheat and cream, and wheat coffee ... free....

With a little reluctance Dan sat down and ate.

"Hum! that was good; but look here, Buzzer" (that was the nickname he had invented for me) you mustn't tell Mubby."

"Mubby?"

"That's what mother and I call my father."

"Of course I won't tell him ... and now we must go to a restaurant and have something real to eat."

"I can't. I don't dare. But I'll sit and watch you eat."

I ordered a steak, and persuaded Dan, finally, to have one too.

"If it's not good for people to eat, why does it taste so good?" mooted Dan meditatively....

"Now I'll be in for it," he added, as we walked out of the door and started back to the Health Home.

"But your father need never know."

"At first I thought it might be all right to fool him just this once.

But I mustn't. I've promised him I'd never lie to him about what I ate, and I must keep my word ... he'll whip me, perhaps."

"Does he whip you much?"

"Not very much ... only when I need it ... and then when I cry, he stops--so it is never very hard!"

I laughed at the boy's frank philosophy....

"But daddy's so funny ... not at all like other daddies," wistfully.

I did not grow friendly enough with Mrs. Baxter even to call her by her first name of Hildreth ... during that brief visit....

Hildreth Baxter was always moving about leisurely, gracefully, like some strange, pretty animal. Not shy, just indifferent, as if processes of thought were going on inside of her that made an inner world that sufficed, to the exclusion of all exterior happenings.

She had a beautiful small head with heavy dark hair; large, brown, thoughtful eyes ... a face so strong as to be handsome rather than beautiful. She walked about in bloomers, languidly conscious that her legs were graceful and lovely....

To her I was, at that time, merely one of her husband's visiting friends....

After little Daniel had manfully squared himself with his conscience, Penton did not whip him. He came to me.

"I did not punish my boy: because it was you, Johnnie, that tempted him," and he flushed angrily. "I'm sure you didn't consider what you were doing. If I thought you did it out of deliberation, I would never speak to you again ... you must learn not to tamper with the ideals of others, Johnnie."

I apologised. I spoke of my reverence and regard for him and his greatness. I asked him to forgive me, which he did. And, as I p.r.o.nounced him to be as great at Sh.e.l.ley, the Rousseau of America--his nave, youthful face wreathed with smiles and peace fell between us again.

"I am thinking of going to live at Eden, the Single Tax Colony not far from Philadelphia ... I want you to come there and visit us in the spring. In the meantime don't let them make you bourgeois in Kansas ...

don't let them smash you into the academic mould."