there he was on the Pepperleighs' verandah that August evening. He
was reciting poetry--either Tennyson's or Shelley's, or his own, you
couldn't tell--and about him sat Zena with her hands clasped and Nora
Gallagher looking at the sky and Jocelyn Drone gazing into infinity,
and a little tubby woman looking at the poet with her head falling
over sideways--in fact, there was a whole group of them.


I don't know what it is about poets that draws women to them in this
way. But everybody knows that a poet has only to sit and saw the air
with his hands and recite verses in a deep stupid voice, and all the
women are crazy over him. Men despise him and would kick him off the
verandah if they dared, but the women simply rave over him.

So Pupkin sat there in the gloom and listened to this poet reciting
Browning and he realized that everybody understood it but him. He
could see Zena with her eyes fixed on the poet as if she were hanging
on to every syllable (she was; she needed to), and he stood it just
about fifteen minutes and then slid off the side of the verandah and
disappeared without even saying good-night.

He walked straight down Oneida Street and along the Main Street just
as hard as he could go. There was only one purpose in his
mind,--suicide. He was heading straight for Jim Eliot's drug store on
the main corner and his idea was to buy a drink of chloroform and
drink it and die right there on the spot.

As Pupkin walked down the street, the whole thing was so vivid in his
mind that he could picture it to the remotest detail. He could even
see it all in type, in big headings in the newspapers of the