yself. So from my earliest childhood days there was a continual tug of
war between us to see who would be master of the house.

There was one inheritance I received from my father, however, that I
have always felt profoundly grateful to him for, namely, a sound
physical constitution. One of his earnest teachings, which, by the way,
was generally ridiculed, was that parents should not bring children into
the world unless they themselves had led temperate lives and were in
perfect health. In this respect he lived as he preached and practiced
temperateness in all things.

As I grew up I was taught to take care of myself physically, as well as
mentally and morally. At the age of eleven I was as large and strong as
most boys of sixteen, and at sixteen there were few men who could outdo
me in feats of strength and endurance. My education was limited to what
I learned at the different public schools which I attended, and without
exception I was always rated as the very worst boy of the whole
institution. I do not believe that ever a day passed that I was not sent
to the principal for refractory conduct, and in many instances I was
suspended or expelled entirely. Fighting was my chief offence as I was
always ready and anxious for a fistic encounter with any boy who was
willing to battle. In short, I was a very unruly child with an
independent spirit, who recognized the authority of nobody to give
arbitrary commands. In consequence of these facts my father and I had
frequent altercations and as my innate love for travel and adventure
asserted itself I ran away from home when but eleven years old, an age
when most children are mere babies, and started out in the world to
paddle my own canoe.

I began to earn my own living by selling newspapers on the streets of
Chicago, and from that time on became a wanderer upon the face of the
earth; working at various occupations and engaging in many schemes and
pursuits in an endeavor to pay my way through life, and during the next
eleven years I not only visited every part of the United States, but
nearly every country in the world, during which time I experienced
enough adventures to fill many books if put into print, but as they have
no bearing upon this narrative I must pass them by without mention. And
so at the age of twenty-two, being then a worthless vagabond, I was
aboard a three-masted schooner working my way from Australia to England
as a common sailor. That was during the year