l see me,
decorous, trim, and in the third person, my literary white tie on,
snooping along through these sentences one after the other, crossing my
I's out, wishing I had never been born.

* * * * *

Postscript. I cannot help recording at this point, for the benefit of
reckless persons, how saying I in a book feels. It feels a good deal like
a very small boy in a very high swing--a kind of flashing-of-everything
through-nothing feeling, but it cannot be undone now, and so if you
please, Gentle Reader, and if everybody will hold their breath, I am
going to hold on tight and do it.

VII

More Parenthesis--But More to the Point

I have gotten into a way lately, while I am just living along, of going
out and taking a good square turn every now and then, in front of
myself. It is not altogether an agreeable experience, but there seems to
be a window in every man's nature on purpose for it--arranged and
located on purpose for it, and I find on the whole that going out around
one's window, once in so often, and standing awhile has advantages. The
general idea is to stand perfectly still for a little time, in a kind of
general, public, disinterested way, and then suddenly, when one is off
one's guard and not looking, so to speak, take a peek backwards into
one's self.

I am aware that it does not follow, because I have just come out and
have been looking into my window, that I have a right to hold up any
person or persons who may be going by in this book, and ask them to look
in too, but at the same time I cannot conceal--do not wish to conceal,
even if I could--that there have been times, standing in front of my
window and looking in, when what I have seen there has seemed to me to
assume a national significance.

There are millions of other windows like it. It is one of the daily
sorrows of my life that the people who own them do not seem to know
it--most of them--except perhaps in a vague, hurried pained way.
Sometimes I feel like calling out to them as I stand by my window--see
them go hurrying by on The Great Street: "Say there, Stranger! Halloa,
Stranger! Want to see yourself? Come right over here and look at me!"

Nobody believes it, of course. It's a good deal like standing and waving
one's arms in the Midway--being an egotist,--but I must say, I have
never got a man yet--got him in out of the rush, I mean, right up in
front of my window--got him once stooped down and really l