r two
short stories which I had lately put into clean copy. Humbly, sadly,
unwillingly I left my home that cold, bleak, dirty day, staggering under
the weight of my valises, for I was not in good health and my mood was
irresolute.

Change was in my world and change of an ominous kind was in my brain.
Subjects which once interested me had lost their savor, and several
tales in which I had put my best effort had failed to meet my own
approval and had been thrown aside. No mechanic, no clerk, would have
envied me as I boarded a filthy street car on my way to the Englewood
station. That I had reached a fork in my trail was all too evident. The
things for which I had labored all my days were as ashes in my hand. I
walked with a stoop and the bag containing my manuscript dragged at my
shoulder like a fifty-pound weight as I painfully climbed the steps
leading to the waiting-room of the grimy, noisy, train station. I was a
million miles from being a "distinguished man of letters" at that
moment, and with a sense of my poverty and declining health, took a seat
in the crowded day coach and rode all day in gloomy silence. At noon I
dined on a sandwich. Dollars looked as large as dinner plates that day.
"Your only way to earn money is to save it," I accused myself.

At the University Club in Pittsburg I recovered slightly. The lecture
having been announced to take place in the dining-room could not be
staged till nine o'clock--a fact which worried me for I had arranged to
take the night train for the East--and this alarm, this fear of losing
my train led me to begin by address while my audience was assembling,
and my hurried utterance led to weariness on the part of my hearers. My
performance was a failure, and to complete my disheartenment I reached
the station about five minutes after the last eastern train had pulled
out.

Dismayed by this mishap, I took a seat in a corner and darkly ruminated.
"What shall I do now? Shall I go back to Chicago? Or shall I go on?"

Decision was in reality taken out of my hands by the baggageman who said
in response to inquiry, "I put your trunk on the 8:40 train. It is well
on its way to New York."

Accepting this as a mandate to go on, I returned to my room in the
University Club and went to bed, but not to sleep. For hours I tossed
and turned in self-questioning, self-accusing fury.

"What a fool you have been to waste years of labor on a book which
nobody wants and which has put you--te