forced me to leave. I was not very disappointed. For two years I
had studied, and in those two years, what was far more valuable, I
had done a prodigious amount of reading. Then, too, my grammar
had improved. It is true, I had not yet learned that I must say
"It is I"; but I no longer was guilty of a double negative in
writing, though still prone to that error in excited speech.

I decided immediately to embark on my career. I had four
preferences: first, music; second, poetry; third, the writing of
philosophic, economic, and political essays; and, fourth, and
last, and least, fiction writing. I resolutely cut out music as
impossible, settled down in my bedroom, and tackled my second,
third, and fourth choices simultaneously. Heavens, how I wrote!
Never was there a creative fever such as mine from which the
patient escaped fatal results. The way I worked was enough to
soften my brain and send me to a mad-house. I wrote, I wrote
everything--ponderous essays, scientific and sociological short
stories, humorous verse, verse of all sorts from triolets and
sonnets to blank verse tragedy and elephantine epics in Spenserian
stanzas. On occasion I composed steadily, day after day, for
fifteen hours a day. At times I forgot to eat, or refused to tear
myself away from my passionate outpouring in order to eat.

And then there was the matter of typewriting. My brother-in-law
owned a machine which he used in the day-time. In the night I was
free to use it. That machine was a wonder. I could weep now as I
recollect my wrestlings with it. It must have been a first model
in the year one of the typewriter era. Its alphabet was all
capitals. It was informed with an evil spirit. It obeyed no
known laws of physics, and overthrew the hoary axiom that like