scle, the less of it remained to him. It was his one commodity, and
each day his stock of it diminished. In the end, if he did not die
before, he sold out and put up his shutters. He was a muscle bankrupt,
and nothing remained to him but to go down into the cellar of society and
perish miserably.

I learned, further, that brain was likewise a commodity. It, too, was
different from muscle. A brain seller was only at his prime when he was
fifty or sixty years old, and his wares were fetching higher prices than
ever. But a labourer was worked out or broken down at forty-five or
fifty. I had been in the cellar of society, and I did not like the place
as a habitation. The pipes and drains were unsanitary, and the air was
bad to breathe. If I could not live on the parlour floor of society, I
could, at any rate, have a try at the attic. It was true, the diet there
was slim, but the air at least was pure. So I resolved to sell no more
muscle, and to become a vendor of brains.

Then began a frantic pursuit of knowledge. I returned to California and
opened the books. While thus equipping myself to become a brain
merchant, it was inevitable that I should delve into sociology. There I
found, in a certain class of books, scientifically formulated, the simple
sociological concepts I had already worked out for myself. Other and
greater minds, before I was born, had worked out all that I had thought
and a vast deal more. I discovered that I was a socialist.

The socialists were revolutionists, inasmuch as they struggled to
overthrow the society of the present, and out of the material to build
the society of the future. I, too, was a socialist and a revolutionist.
I joined the groups of working-class and intellectual revolutionists, and
for the first time came into intellectual living. Here I found
keen-flashing intellects and brilliant wits; for here I met strong and
alert-brained, withal horny-handed, members of the working-class;
unfrocked preachers too wide in their Christianity for any congregation
of Mammon-worshippers; professors broken on the wheel of university
subservience to the ruling class and flung out because they were quick
with knowledge which they strove to apply to the affairs of mankind.

Here I found, also, warm faith in the human, glowing idealism,
sweetnesses of unselfishness, renunciation, and martyrdom--all the
splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here life was clean, noble, and
alive.