I don't
see how it can miss it--but be that as it may, I know it has saved many a
man's soul. I know it saved mine.

"This fellow--an older man with whom I worked--talked to me. He saw the
state I was in, won my confidence and got my story. And then he began
talking to me and gave me books. He got me to come to his house instead
of the places I was going to, saying nothing against the other places,
but just making his things so much more attractive. We used to talk and
argue and gradually other things fell away just because there was no
room for them.

"You know I had loved books--read all I could get--but didn't seem to get
the right ones. Well, after I had served time breaking clay I didn't care
anything about books--too sore, too dogged, too full of hate. But the
love for the books came back, and through the books, and through this
friend, came the splendid saving vision.

"Vision of what the world might be--world with the army left out, with
all that the army represented to me vanished from the earth. With men
not ruling and cursing other men; but working together--the world for
all and all for the world. And the thing that saved me was that I saw
there was something to work for--something to believe in--look
at--think about--when old memories of the guard knocking me down with
the butt of his gun would tear into my soul and bring me low with the
hate they roused.

"And so I began again, Katie dear, that sense of things as they might
be--that vision--taking some of the sting from what I had suffered from
things as they were. I stopped hating and cursing; I began thinking and
dreaming. There came the desire to _know_. I tore into books like a
madman. I couldn't go on hating my fellow-men because I was too busy
trying to find out about them. And so it happened that there were things
more interesting to think about than the things I had suffered in the
army; I was carried out of myself--and saved.

"I wish I could talk to some of those other fellows! Some of those boys
who ran away from the army, not because they were criminals and cowards,
but just because they didn't know what to make of things. I wish I could
talk to some of those men who dug clay with me at Fort Leavenworth--men
who went away cursing the government, loathing the flag, hating all men,
and who have nothing to take them out of it. I wish I could take them up
with me to the hill-top and say--'There! Don't look at the little pit
down below! Look o