It was a
magic night, deathly still, without the slightest breeze to stir the
foliage; and one caught one's breath and felt the pang that is
almost hurt, so exquisite was the beauty of it. Faint and far could
be heard the thin thunder of the surf upon the beach. There were no
beds; and we drowsed and slept wherever we thought the floor
softest. Near by, a woman panted and moaned in her sleep, and all
about us the dying islanders coughed in the night.
CHAPTER XI - THE NATURE MAN
I first met him on Market Street in San Francisco. It was a wet and
drizzly afternoon, and he was striding along, clad solely in a pair
of abbreviated knee-trousers and an abbreviated shirt, his bare feet
going slick-slick through the pavement-slush. At his heels trooped
a score of excited gamins. Every head - and there were thousands -
turned to glance curiously at him as he went by. And I turned, too.
Never had I seen such lovely sunburn. He was all sunburn, of the
sort a blond takes on when his skin does not peel. His long yellow
hair was burnt, so was his beard, which sprang from a soil
unploughed by any razor. He was a tawny man, a golden-tawny man,
all glowing and radiant with the sun. Another prophet, thought I,
come up to town with a message that will save the world.
A few weeks later I was with some friends in their bungalow in the
Piedmont hills overlooking San Francisco Bay. "We've got him, we've
got him," they barked. "We caught him up a tree; but he's all right
now, he'll feed from the hand. Come on and see him." So I
accompanied them up a dizzy hill, and in a rickety shack in the
midst of a eucalyptus grove found my sunburned prophet of the city
pavements.
He hastened to meet us, arriving in the whirl and blur of a
handspring. He did not shake hands with us; instead, his greeting
took the form of stunts. He turned more handsprings. He twisted
his body sinuously, like a snake, until, having sufficiently
limbered up, he bent from the hips, and, with legs straight and
knees touching, beat a tattoo on the ground with the palms of his
hands. He whirligigged and pirouetted, dancing and cavorting round
like an inebriated ape. All the sun-warmth of his ardent life
beamed in his face. I am so happy, was the song without words he
sang.
He sang it all evening, ringing the changes on it with an endless
variety of stunts. "A fool! a fool! I met a fool in the forest!"
thought I, and a worthy fool he proved. Between handsprings and
whirligigs he delivered his message that would save the world. It
was twofold. First, let suffering humanity strip off its clothing
and run wild in the mountains and valleys; and, second, let the very
miserable world adopt phonetic spelling.
