own, over the main street. This meant that I was to have a whole room to
myself, and I was glad ... a whole room where I could stand a small
writing desk and set up my books in rows. With an extreme effort I
burned my underground books.

* * * * *

All the women liked my father. He dressed neatly and well. His trousers
were never without their fresh crease. He was very vain of his neat
appearance, even to the wearing of a fresh-cut flower in his buttonhole.
This vanity made him also wear his derby indoors and out, because of his
entirely bald head.

Every time he could devise an excuse for going to the departments where
the women worked, he would do so, and flirt with them. He, for this
reason I am sure, made special friends with Schlegel, foreman of the
collar department. I never saw a man derive a keener pleasure out of
just standing and talking with women.

Though, like most men, he enjoyed a smutty story, yet I never heard him
say a really gross thing about any woman. And his language was always in
good English, with few curses and oaths in it.

* * * * *

Our new place was a bit of heaven to me. I procured a copy of Whitman's
_Leaves of Grass_, of Darwin's _Origin of Species_ and _Descent of Man_.
Laboriously I delved through these last two books, my knowledge of
elementary zoology helping me to the explication of their meaning.