shed it off. I heard her read it aloud to my father, I
watched his face, and I saw the grim smile that came over it as he asked
me,

"Are those the words you heard them sing?"

"Not all of them are," I answered. And suddenly, somehow or other, I
felt guilty, as though I had done something wrong. But angrily I shook
it off. Why should I always give in to his harbor? This that I had
written was fine! This was Art! At last in spite of him and his docks I
had found something great that I could do!

When the article was taken by a Sunday paper in New York and a check for
eight dollars was sent me with a brief but flattering letter, my pride
and hopes rose high. The eight dollars I spent on a pin for my mother,
as "Pendennis" or some other boy genius had done. When the article
appeared in the paper my mother bought fifty copies and gave them out to
our neighbors. There was nothing to shock such neighbors here, and they
praised me highly for what they called my "real descriptive power."

"That boy will go far," I heard one cultured old gentleman say. And I
lost no time in starting out. No musical career for me, down came
Beethoven from my wall, for I was now a writer. And not of mere
articles, either. Inside of six months I had written a dozen short
stories, and when each of these in turn was rejected I began to plan out
a five-act play. But here my mother stopped me.

"You're trying to go too fast," she said. "Think of it, you are barely
nineteen. You must give up everything else just now and spend all your
time getting ready for college. For if you are going to be a strong
writer, as I hope, you need to learn so many things first. And you will
find them all in college--as I did once when I was young," she added a
little wistfully.

CHAPTER VI

The first thing I needed in college was a good thorough dressing down.
And this I got without any delay. In the first few weeks my artist's
ears and eyes and soul were hazed to a frazzle. From "that boy who will
go far" I became "you damn young freshman." I was told to make love to a
horse's hind leg, I was made to perch on a gatepost and read the
tenderest passages of "Romeo and Juliet," replacing Romeo's name by my
own, and Juliet's by that of stout Mrs. Doogan, who scrubbed floors in a
dormitory close by. Refusals only made matters painful. Besides, I was
told by a freshman friend that I'd better fit in or I'd "queer" myself.

This dread of "queering" myself at firs