to bring about. Throughout the time of
my growth my dear parent alternated between periods of high exultation
and of keen torture. As time passed he became more and more completely
absorbed in me. When my climax came into sight he fell to working upon
me with exceeding fury, and in the construction of my climax it was
plain that he wrestled with much agony--an agony, however, which seemed
to be a kind of strange, mad joy.

And then one night (I remember a storm raged without) my parent came to
me with a wild, yet happy, light on his face. He pounded at me harder
than ever before; and at intervals paced the floor, up and down, up and
down, like a man demented, throwing innumerable half-smoked cigarettes
over everywhere. The wind blew, and the little frame house strained
and groaned in its timbers. As he bent over me a face enwrapt,
striking the keys with a quick, nervous touch, great tears started from
my dear parent's eyes. Then, it must have been near dawn and the
little room hung and swayed in a golden fog of tobacco smoke, I knew
that I was finished. My parent was bending over my last page like a
six-day bicycle racer over his machine, when he straightened up,
raising his hands, and drove his right fist into his left palm.
"Done!" he cried, and started from his chair to pace the room in such a
frenzy as I had never seen him in before. It was fully half an hour
before his excitement abated, when he fell back into his chair, and
smoked incessantly until the light of morning paled our lamp. At
length I noticed he had ceased to smoke, his head gradually slipped
backward, his eyes closed, and he slept. Thus I was born and brought
up and grew to manuscript's estate in a little Middle-Western town, on
a rented typewriter.

One day shortly after this I was packed up with great care and very
carefully addressed, and under my parent's arm I boarded an interurban
car. We new over the friendly-looking Hoosier landscape, and at length
rolled into the interurban station of the bustling capital, the largest
city I had as yet seen. I did not see much of it, however, on this
first visit, as we went quickly around the handsome Soldiers' Monument
to the office of the American Express Company on Meridian Street. I
was given over in charge of a man there who very briskly weighed me and
asked my parent my value. My parent seemed to be in a good deal of a
dilemma as to this. He hemmed and hawed and finally replied: "Well,