previous year's work.

Nineteen hours a day I studied. For three months I kept this
pace, only breaking it on several occasions. My body grew weary,
my mind grew weary, but I stayed with it. My eyes grew weary and
began to twitch, but they did not break down. Perhaps, toward the
last, I got a bit dotty. I know that at the time I was confident,
I had discovered the formula for squaring the circle; but I
resolutely deferred the working of it out until after the
examinations. Then I would show them.

Came the several days of the examinations, during which time I
scarcely closed my eyes in sleep, devoting every moment to
cramming and reviewing. And when I turned in my last examination
paper I was in full possession of a splendid case of brain-fag. I
didn't want to see a book. I didn't want to think or to lay eyes
on anybody who was liable to think.

There was but one prescription for such a condition, and I gave it
to myself--the adventure-path. I didn't wait to learn the result
of my examinations. I stowed a roll of blankets and some cold
food into a borrowed whitehall boat and set sail. Out of the
Oakland Estuary I drifted on the last of an early morning ebb,
caught the first of the flood up bay, and raced along with a
spanking breeze. San Pablo Bay was smoking, and the Carquinez
Straits off the Selby Smelter were smoking, as I picked up ahead
and left astern the old landmarks I had first learned with Nelson
in the unreefer Reindeer.

Benicia showed before me. I opened the bight of Turner's