d broken up.

I am not a bit gregarious. I cannot herd with other men and be "Hail,
fellow, well met!" with them as I wish I could. I am much more at home
with women; we seem to understand one another better. Put me with a
lot of men, and we naturally separate as oil and water separate. On
shipboard it is rarely that any of the men take to me, or I to them--I
do not smoke or drink or tell stories, or talk business or politics, and
the men have little use for me. On my last voyage across the Atlantic,
the only man who seemed to notice me, or to whom I felt drawn at all,
was a Catholic priest. Real countrymen, trappers, hunters, and farmers,
I seem to draw near to. On the Harriman Alaskan Expedition the two men
I felt most at home with were Fred Dellenbaugh, the artist and explorer,
and Captain Kelly, the guide. Can you understand this? Do you see why
men do not, as a rule, care for me, and why women do?

I accuse myself of want of sociability. Probably I am too thin-skinned.
A little more of the pachyderm would help me in this respect.

Some day I will give you more self-analysis and self-criticism.

I am what you might call an extemporaneous writer--I write without any
previous study or preparation, save in so far as my actual life from day
to day has prepared me for it. I do not work up my subject, or outline
it, or sketch it in the rough. When I sit down to write upon any theme,
like that of my "Cosmopolitan" article last April ("What Life Means to
Me," 1906), or of my various papers on animal intelligence, I do not
know what I have to say on the subject till I delve into my mind and see
what I find there. The writing is like fishing or hunting, or sifting
the sand for gold--I am never sure of what I shall find. All I want is a
certain feeling, a bit of leaven, which I seem to refer to some place in
my chest--not my heart, but to a point above that and nearer the centre
of the chest--the place that always glows or suffuses when one thinks of
any joy or good tidings that is coming his way. It is a kind of hunger
for that subject; it warms me a little to think of it, a pleasant thrill
runs through me; or it is something like a lover's feeling for his
sweetheart--I long to be alone with it, and to give myself to it. I am
sure I shall have a good time. Hence, my writing is the measure of my
life. I can write only about what I have previously felt and lived. I
have no legerdemain to invoke things out of the air, or to