chapter of any of his novels, nor the
first act of any of his plays (which concerned authors who roughly
resembled Walter Babson).

He was distinguished from his fellows by the fact that each year he grew
more aware that he hadn't even a dim candle of talent; that he was
ill-planned and unpurposed; that he would have to settle down to the
ordinary gray limbo of jobs and offices--as soon as he could get control
of his chaotic desires. Literally, he hated himself at times; hated his
own egotism, his treacherous appetite for drink and women and sloth, his
imitative attempts at literature. But no one knew how bitterly he
despised himself, in lonely walks in the rain, in savage pacing about
his furnished room. To others he seemed vigorously conceited, cock-sure,
noisily ready to blame the world for his own failures.

Walter Babson was born in Kansas. His father was a farmer and
horse-doctor, a heavy drinker, an eccentric who joined every radical
political movement. In a country school, just such a one as Una had
taught, then in high school in a near-by town, Walter had won all the
prizes for essays and debating, and had learned a good deal about
Shakespeare and Caesar and George Washington. Also he had learned a good
deal about drinking beer, smoking manfully, and tempting the giggling
girls who hung about the "deepot." He ran away from high school, and in
the most glorious years of his life worked his way down the Mississippi
and up the Rio Grande, up to Alaska and down to Costa Rica, a butt and
jester for hoboes, sailors, longshoremen, miners, cow-punchers,
lunch-room owners, and proprietors of small newspapers. He learned to
stick type and run a press. He returned to Kansas and worked on a
country newspaper, studying poetry and college-entrance requirements in
the evening. He had, at this time, the not entirely novel idea that "he
ought to be able to make a lot of good fiction out of all his
experiences." Actually, he had no experiences, because he had no
instinct for beauty. The proof is that he read quite solemnly and
reverently a vile little periodical for would-be authors, which reduced
authorship to a way of earning one's living by supplying editors with
cheap but ingenious items to fill space. It put literature on a level
with keeping a five-and-ten-cent store. But Walter conned its pompous
trade journal discussions as to whether the name and address of the
author should be typed on the left or the right side of t