urred
soon after the time when my father died; when the news went out that
I, his heir, was left with but a shrunken fortune, and with many debts
to pay; news which I, myself, had promulgated for reasons of my own.
After that, called foolish by all my friends, lamented by members of
my family, forgotten, as I fancy, by most who knew me, I had retired
to this lodge in the wilderness. Here, grown suddenly resentful of a
life hitherto wasted in money-getting alone, I had resolved to spend
the remainder of my days, as beseemed a student and a philosopher.
Having read Weininger and other philosophers, I was convinced that
woman was the lowest and most unworthy thing in the scale of created
things, a thing quite beneath the attention of a thinking man.

I have said that I was scarce beyond thirty years of age. Even so, I
found myself already old; and like any true philosopher, I resolved to
make myself young. As hitherto I had had no boyhood, I determined to
achieve a boyhood for myself. Studying myself, I discovered that I had
rarely smiled; so I resolved to find somewhat to make me smile. The
great realm of knowledge, widest and sweetest of all empires for a
man, lay before me alluringly when I entered upon my business career;
and so interested was I in my business and my books that only by
chance had I met the woman who drove me out of both. A boy I had never
been; nay, nor even a youth. I had always been old. True, like others
of my station, I had owned my auto cars, my matched teams--owned them
now, indeed--but I had never owned a dog. So, when I came hither with
ample leisure, perhaps my chief ambition was a deliberate purpose to
encompass my deferred boyhood. Thus I had built this house of logs
which now--with a surprised and gratifying throb of my heart I learned
it--appealed to the souls of real boys. It was the castle where I
dreamed; and now it was the palace of their dreams also. I felt, at
least, that I had succeeded. My heart throbbed in a new way, very
foolish, yet for some reason suddenly enjoyable.

My house was all of logs and had no decorations of paint or tapestry
within. Its only arras was of the skins of wild beasts--of the African
lion and leopard, the zebra, many antelopes. The walls were hung with
mounted heads--those of the moose, the elk, the bighorn, most of the
main trophies of my own land and to these, through my foreign hunting,
I had added heads of all the great trophies of Africa and Asia as