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.
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