Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/82

 wind, nor rain, nor sunshine, nor midnight. Down the upper river he felt the same as when he strolled along Michigan Avenue, along the Park. He was penned in and bound and a prisoner, physically. Mentally, publiishers of all kinds surrounded him by an impenetrable wall of two words, "Not Available." He could let his genius blush unrecognized in the Fredonia newspaper—but that small consolation was wrenched from him for what the publishers declared he possessed:

"You're too prosaic," said the city editor.

"You're too poetic," wrote an editor who saw possibilities in him.

"Reporters must have temperament, and authors must not!" Murdong stated his discovery. "Oh"

The upper Mississippi was like his writing experiences. The great stone bluffs, the rollicking shoals, the numerous cities and towns, the railroad rains pounding up and down and over countless bridges, the very liveliness and sauciness of Nature kept him stirred up and uncalm.

Then, having passed the Grand Tower, and swept down the widening surface and down the lengthening reaches and bends, something gripped him tenderly, and something soothed and softened his frame of mind. He ceased to bend his oars when he pulled