Nelson! I could feel myself blushing with shame. I sat down on
the stringer-piece of the wharf and buried my face in my hands.
And the heat of my shame burned up my neck and into my cheeks and
forehead. I have blushed many times in my life, but never have I
experienced so terrible a blush as that one.

And sitting there on the stringer-piece in my shame, I did a great
deal of thinking and transvaluing of values. I had been born
poor. Poor I had lived. I had gone hungry on occasion. I had
never had toys nor playthings like other children. My first
memories of life were pinched by poverty. The pinch of poverty
had been chronic. I was eight years old when I wore my first
little undershirt actually sold in a store across the counter.
And then it had been only one little undershirt. When it was
soiled I had to return to the awful home-made things until it was
washed. I had been so proud of it that I insisted on wearing it
without any outer garment. For the first time I mutinied against
my mother--mutinied myself into hysteria, until she let me wear
the store undershirt so all the world could see.

Only a man who has undergone famine can properly value food; only
sailors and desert-dwellers know the meaning of fresh water. And
only a child, with a child's imagination, can come to know the
meaning of things it has been long denied. I early discovered
that the only things I could have were those I got for myself. My
meagre childhood developed meagreness. The first things I had
been able to get for myself had been cigarette pictures, cigarette
posters, and cigarette albums. I had not had the spending of the
money I earned, so I traded "extra" newspapers for these
treasures. I traded duplicates with the other boys, and