e cruel restrictions
placed upon my exercise, even upon movement in that wooden chair, where I
sat with numb limbs five hours at a stretch, had greatly aggravated a
slight injury to my spine received in babyhood. And now I was facing a
life of hard work, handicapped by that most tenacious, most cruel of
torments, a spinal trouble.

At fourteen I knew enough about such terms as vertebra of the back,
spinal-column, spinal-cord, sheath of cord, spinal-marrow, axial nervous
system, curvatures, flexes and reflexes to have nicely established an
energetic quack as a specialist in spinal trouble; and, alas! after all
these years no one has added to my list of flexes and reflexes the words
"fixed or refixed," so my poor spine and I go struggling on, and I
sometimes think, if it could speak, it might declare that I am as dented,
crooked, and wavering as it is. However, I suppose that state of
uncertain health may have caused the capricious appetite that tormented
me. Always poor, I had yet never been able to endure coarse food. Heavy
meats, cabbage, turnips, beets, fried things filled me with cold
repulsion. Crackers and milk formed my dinner, day in and day out. Now
and then crackers and water had to suffice me; but I infinitely preferred
the latter to a meal of roast pork or of corned beef, followed by
rice-pudding.

But the trouble from the fastidious appetite came when it suddenly
demanded something for its gratification--imperiously, even furiously
demanded it. If anyone desires a thing intensely, the continual denial of
that craving becomes almost a torture. So, when that finical appetite of
mine would suddenly cry out for oysters, I could think of nothing else.
Quick tears would spring into my eyes as I approached the oysterless
table. Again and again I would dream of them, cans and cans would be
piled on my table (I lived far from shell-oysters then), and when I awoke
I would turn on my lumpy bed and moan like a sick animal. I mention this
because I wish to explain what that little odd pile of money had been
saved for.

At the approach of hot weather a craving for ice-cream had seized upon me
with almost agonizing force. It is a desire common to all young things,
but the poverty of my surroundings, the lack of the more delicate
vegetables, of fruits, of sweets, added to the intensity of my craving. I
had found a place away up on the market where for ten cents one could get
quite a large saucer of the delicate dainty. F