So after telling Mr. Mifflin how I felt about
matters I dived into the Parnassus and lay down most
comfortably on the bunk. Bock the terrier joined me, and I
rested there in great comfort of mind and body as we ambled
down the grade. The sun shone through the little skylight
gilding a tin pan that hung over the cook stove. Tacked here
and there were portraits of authors, and I noticed a faded
newspaper cutting pinned up. The headlines ran: "Literary
Pedlar Lectures on Poetry." I read it through. Apparently
the Professor (so I had begun to call him, as the aptness of
the nickname stuck in my mind) had given a lecture in Camden,
N. J., where he had asserted that Tennyson was a greater poet
than Walt Whitman; and the boosters of the Camden poet had
enlivened the evening with missiles. It seems that the chief
Whitman disciple in Camden is Mr. Traubel; and Mr. Mifflin had
started the rumpus by asserting that Tennyson, too, had
"Traubels of his own." What an absurd creature the Professor
was, I thought, as I lay comfortably lulled by the rolling wheels.
Greenbriar is a straggling little town, built around a large
common meadow. Mifflin's general plan in towns, he had told
me, was to halt Parnassus in front of the principal store or
hotel, and when a little throng had gathered he would put up
the flaps of the van, distribute his cards, and deliver a
harangue on the value of good books.
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