ed, he muttered as if to himself, "Some undone
widow sits upon my sword," or when as _Petruchio_ in making a playful
snatch at Kate's hand with the blaze of a lion's anger in his eye his
voice rang out, "Were it the paw of an angry bear, I'd smite it off--but
as it's Kate's I kiss it."

To the boy from the cabin on the Dakota plain these stage pictures were
of almost incommunicable beauty and significance. They justified me in
all my daring. They made any suffering past, present, or future, worth
while, and the knowledge that these glories were evanescent and that I
must soon return to the Dakota plain only deepened their power and added
to the grandeur of every scene.

Booth's home at this time was on Beacon Hill, and I used to walk
reverently by just to see where the great man housed. Once, the door
being open, I caught a momentary glimpse of a curiously ornate umbrella
stand, and the soft glow of a distant lamp, and the vision greatly
enriched me. This singularly endowed artist presented to me the radiant
summit of human happiness and glory, and to see him walk in or out of
his door was my silent hope, but alas, this felicity was denied me!

Under the spell of these performers, I wrote a series of studies of the
tragedian in his greatest roles. "Edwin Booth as Lear," "Edwin Booth as
Hamlet," and so on, recording with minutest fidelity every gesture,
every accent, till four of these impersonations were preserved on the
page as if in amber. I re-read my Shakespeare in the light of Booth's
eyes, in the sound of his magic voice, and when the season ended, the
city grew dark, doubly dark for me. Thereafter I lived in the fading
glory of that month.

These were growing days! I had moments of tremendous expansion, hours
when my mind went out over the earth like a freed eagle, but these
flights were always succeeded by fits of depression as I realized my
weakness and my poverty. Nevertheless I persisted in my studies.

Under the influence of Spencer I traced a parallel development of the
Arts and found a measure of scientific peace. Under the inspiration of
Whitman I pondered the significance of democracy and caught some part of
its spiritual import. With Henry George as guide, I discovered the main
cause of poverty and suffering in the world, and so in my little room,
living on forty cents a day, I was in a sense profoundly happy. So long
as I had a dollar and a half with which to pay my rent and two dollars
for the ke