t who thinks only of his art,
had been improvident and had consumed the seed without putting a portion
into the ground. Only wild food, and too little of that, found with
much seeking and got with many hurts. Birds screamed at and scolded me;
branches bruised and thorns scratched me; and still worse were the angry
clouds of waspish things no bigger than flies. Buzz--buzz! Sting--sting!
A serpent's tooth has failed to kill me; little do I care for your small
drops of fiery venom so that I get at the spoil--grubs and honey. My
white bread and purple wine! Once my soul hungered after knowledge; I
took delight in fine thoughts finely expressed; I sought them carefully
in printed books: now only this vile bodily hunger, this eager seeking
for grubs and honey, and ignoble war with little things!

A bad hunter I proved after larger game. Bird and beast despised my
snares, which took me so many waking hours at night to invent, so many
daylight hours to make. Once, seeing a troop of monkeys high up in the
tall trees, I followed and watched them for a long time, thinking how
royally I should feast if by some strange unheard-of accident one
were to fall disabled to the ground and be at my mercy. But nothing
impossible happened, and I had no meat. What meat did I ever have except
an occasional fledgling, killed in its cradle, or a lizard, or small
tree-frog detected, in spite of its green colour, among the foliage? I
would roast the little green minstrel on the coals. Why not? Why should
he live to tinkle on his mandolin and clash his airy cymbals with no
appreciative ear to listen? Once I had a different and strange kind of
meat; but the starved stomach is not squeamish. I found a serpent coiled
up in my way in a small glade, and arming myself with a long stick,
I roused him from his siesta and slew him without mercy. Rima was not
there to pluck the rage from my heart and save his evil life. No coral
snake this, with slim, tapering body, ringed like a wasp with brilliant
colour; but thick and blunt, with lurid scales, blotched with black;
also a broad, flat, murderous head, with stony, ice-like, whity-blue
eyes, cold enough to freeze a victim's blood in its veins and make it
sit still, like some wide-eyed creature carved in stone, waiting for
the sharp, inevitable stroke--so swift at last, so long in coming. "O
abominable flat head, with icy-cold, humanlike, fiend-like eyes, I shall
cut you off and throw you away!" And away I flung