urse.

From this sunless nook, this narrow niche, I began my study of Boston,
whose historic significance quite overpowered me. I was alone. Mr.
Bashford, in Portland, Maine, was the only person in all the east on
whom I could call for aid or advice in case of sickness. My father wrote
me that he had relatives living in the city but I did not know how to
find them. No one could have been more absolutely alone than I during
that first month. I made no acquaintances, I spoke to no one.

A part of each day was spent in studying the historical monuments of the
city, and the remaining time was given to reading at the Young Men's
Union or in the Public Library, which stood next door to my lodging
house.

At night I made detailed studies of the habits of the cockroaches with
which my room was peopled. There was something uncanny in the action of
these beasts. They were new to me and apparently my like had never
before been observed by them. They belonged to the shadow, to the cold
and to the damp of the city, whereas I was fresh from the sunlight of
the plain, and as I watched them peering out from behind my wash-basin,
they appeared to marvel at me and to confer on my case with almost
elfish intelligence.

Tantalized by an occasional feeble and vacillating current of warm air
from the register, I was forced at times to wear my overcoat as I read,
and at night I spread it over my cot. I did not see the sun for a month.
The wind was always filled with rain or sleet, and as the lights in
Bates' Hall were almost always blazing, I could hardly tell when day
left off and night began. It seemed as if I had been plunged into
another and darker world, a world of storm, of gray clouds, of endless
cold.

Having resolved to keep all my expenses within five dollars per week, I
laid down a scientific plan for cheap living. I first nosed out every
low-priced eating place within ten minutes walk of my lodging and soon
knew which of these "joints" were wholesome, and which were not. Just
around the corner was a place where a filling dinner could be procured
for fifteen cents, including pudding, and the little lunch counter on
Tremont street supplied my breakfast. Not one nickel did I spend in
carfare, and yet I saw almost every celebrated building in the city.
However, I tenderly regarded my shoe soles each night, for the cost of
tapping was enormous.

My notion of studying at some school was never carried out. The Boston
University c