Now he was too much in earnest.

He wanted to help his People, the community in which he lived--the little world of the San Joaquin, at grapples with the Railroad.

The struggle had found its poet.
He told himself that his place was here.

Only the words of the manager of a lecture bureau troubled him for a moment.

To range the entire nation, telling all his countrymen of the drama that was working itself out on this fringe of the continent, this ignored and distant Pacific Coast, rousing their interest and stirring them up to action--appealed to him.