was a conductor "bummed" the railroad for a pass and got it. None
of my relatives was a railroad man, and so to obtain the free
transportation which was every American's inalienable right, I
had to let the passenger trains go by and take the freights.

Once I got ditched at a junction, and while waiting for the
next freight I wandered down the track to where I had seen a
small house and a big watermelon patch. The man who lived there
was a chap named Frank Bannerman. I always remember him because
he was a communist, the first one I ever saw, and he filled my
pockets with about ten pounds of radical pamphlets which I
promised to read. He made a bargain with me that if I would read
and digest the Red literature he would give me all the
watermelons I could eat.

"I'm a comrade already," I said, meaning it as a merry jest,
that I would be anything for a watermelon. But he took it
seriously and his eyes lit up like any fanatic's.

"I knew it," he said. "With a face like yours--look at the
brow, look at the intellect, the intellect." I was flattered.
"Come here, wife," he called through the door. "Come here and
look at the intellect."

The wife, who was a barefooted, freckle-faced woman, came out
on the porch and, smiling sweetly, sized up my intellect. I made
up my mind that here were the two smartest people in America. For
they saw I was bulging with intellect. Nobody else had ever
discovered it, not even I myself. I thought I was a muscle-bound
iron puddler, but they pronounced me an intellectual giant. It