number of things fairly well--sang, played the guitar and violin,
acted, painted signs and wrote poetry. My father did not
encourage my verse-making for he thought it too visionary, and
being a visionary himself, he believed he understood the dangers
of following the promptings of the poetic temperament. I doubted
if anything would come of the verse-writing myself. At this time
it is easy to picture my father, a lawyer of ability, regarding
me, nonplused, as the worst case he had ever had. He wanted me
to do something practical, besides being ambitious for me to
follow in his footsteps, and at last persuaded me to settle down
and read law in his office. This I really tried to do
conscientiously, but finding that political economy and
Blackstone did not rhyme and that the study of law was
unbearable, I slipped out of the office one summer afternoon,
when all out-doors called imperiously, shook the last dusty
premise from my head and was away.

"The immediate instigator of my flight was a traveling medicine
man who appealed to me for this reason: My health was bad, very
bad,--as bad as I was. Our doctor had advised me to travel, but
how could I travel without money? The medicine man needed an
assistant and I plucked up courage to ask if I could join the
party and paint advertisements for him.

"I rode out of town with that glittering cavalcade without saying
good-by to any one, and though my patron was not a diplomaed
doctor, as I found out, he was a man of excellent habits, and the
whole company was made up of good straight boys, jolly chirping
vagabonds like myself. It was delightful to bowl over the
country in that way. I laughed all the time. Miles and miles of