roving. But Ed Morrell is another story. I shall tell you about him a
little later. I have so much to tell I scarce know how to begin.

Well, a beginning. I was born on a quarter-section in Minnesota. My
mother was the daughter of an immigrant Swede. Her name was Hilda
Tonnesson. My father was Chauncey Standing, of old American stock. He
traced back to Alfred Standing, an indentured servant, or slave if you
please, who was transported from England to the Virginia plantations in
the days that were even old when the youthful Washington went a-surveying
in the Pennsylvania wilderness.

A son of Alfred Standing fought in the War of the Revolution; a grandson,
in the War of 1812. There have been no wars since in which the Standings
have not been represented. I, the last of the Standings, dying soon
without issue, fought as a common soldier in the Philippines, in our
latest war, and to do so I resigned, in the full early ripeness of
career, my professorship in the University of Nebraska. Good heavens,
when I so resigned I was headed for the Deanship of the College of
Agriculture in that university--I, the star-rover, the red-blooded
adventurer, the vagabondish Cain of the centuries, the militant priest of
remotest times, the moon-dreaming poet of ages forgotten and to-day
unrecorded in man's history of man!

And here I am, my hands dyed red in Murderers' Row, in the State Prison
of Folsom, awaiting the day decreed by the machinery of state when the
servants of the state will lead me away into what they fondly believe is
the dark--the dark they fear; the dark that gives them fearsome and
superstitious fancies; the dark that drives them, drivelling and
yammering, to the altars of their fear-created, anthropomorphic gods.