of the intellectual universe like an impatient bat. I
learned a little of everything and nothing very thoroughly. With so many
peaks in sight, I had no time to spend on digging up the valley soil.

My only exercise was an occasional slow walk. I could not afford to
waste my food in physical effort, and besides I was thinly dressed and
could not go out except when the sun shone. My overcoat was considerably
more than half cotton and a poor shield against the bitter wind which
drove straight from the arctic sea into my bones. Even when the weather
was mild, the crossings were nearly always ankle deep in slush, and
walking was anything but a pleasure, therefore it happened that for days
I took no outing whatsoever. From my meals I returned to my table in
the library and read until closing time, conserving in every way my
thirty cents' worth of "food units."

In this way I covered a wide literary and scientific territory. Humped
over my fitful register I discussed the Nebular Hypothesis. My poets and
scientists not merely told me of things I had never known, they
confirmed me in certain conceptions which had come to me without effort
in the past. I became an evolutionist in the fullest sense, accepting
Spencer as the greatest living thinker. Fiske and Galton and Allen were
merely assistants to the Master Mind whose generalizations included in
their circles all modern discovery.

It was a sad change when, leaving the brilliant reading room where my
mind had been in contact with these masters of scientific world, I crept
back to my minute den, there to sit humped and shivering (my overcoat
thrown over my shoulders) confronting with scared resentment the sure
wasting of my little store of dollars. In spite of all my care, the
pennies departed from my pockets like grains of sand from an hour-glass
and most disheartening of all I was making no apparent gain toward
fitting myself for employment in the west.

Furthermore, the greatness, the significance, the beauty of Boston was
growing upon me. I felt the neighboring presence of its autocrats more
definitely and powerfully each day. Their names filled the daily papers,
their comings and goings were carefully noted. William Dean Howells,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, John G. Whittier, Edwin Booth, James Russell
Lowell, all these towering personalities seemed very near to me now, and
their presence, even if I never saw their faces, was an inspiration to
one who had definitely decided t