Book One: Chapter I

by Sherwood Anderson

　　Hugh McVey was born in a little hole of a town stuck on a mud bank on thewestern shore of the Mississippi River in the State of Missouri. It wasa miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a narrowstrip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back from thetown--called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing"--was almost entirelyworthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow and stony, wastilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who seemed as exhaustedand no-account as the land on which they lived. They were chronicallydiscouraged, and the merchants and artisans of the town were in the samestate. The merchants, who ran their stores--poor tumble-down ramshackleaffairs--on the credit system, could not get pay for the goods they handedout over their counters and the artisans, the shoemakers, carpenters andharnessmakers, could not get pay for the work they did. Only the town's twosaloons prospered. The saloon keepers sold their wares for cash and, as themen of the town and the farmers who drove into town felt that without drinklife was unbearable, cash always could be found for the purpose of gettingdrunk.

　　Hugh McVey's father, John McVey, had been a farm hand in his youth butbefore Hugh was born had moved into town to find employment in a tannery.The tannery ran for a year or two and then failed, but John McVey stayed intown. He also became a drunkard. It was the easy obvious thing for him todo. During the time of his employment in the tannery he had been marriedand his son had been born. Then his wife died and the idle workman took hischild and went to live in a tiny fishing shack by the river. How the boylived through the next few years no one ever knew. John McVey loitered inthe streets and on the river bank and only awakened out of his habitualstupor when, driven by hunger or the craving for drink, he went for a day'swork in some farmer's field at harvest time or joined a number of otheridlers for an adventurous trip down river on a lumber raft. The baby wasleft shut up in the shack by the river or carried about wrapped in a soiledblanket. Soon after he was old enough to walk he was compelled to find workin order that he might eat. The boy of ten went listlessly about town atthe heels of his father. The two found work, which the boy did while theman lay sleeping in the sun. They cleaned cisterns, swept out stores andsaloons and at night went with a wheelbarrow and a box to remove and dumpin the river the contents of out-houses. At fourteen Hugh was as tall ashis father and almost without education. He could read a little and couldwrite his own name, had picked up these accomplishments from other boys whocame to fish with him in the river, but he had never been to school. Fordays sometimes he did nothing but lie half asleep in the shade of a bush onthe river bank. The fish he caught on his more industrious days he sold fora few cents to some housewife, and thus got money to buy food for his biggrowing indolent body. Like an animal that has come to its maturity heturned away from his father, not because of resentment for his hard youth,but because he thought it time to begin to go his own way.

　　In his fourteenth year and when the boy was on the point of sinking intothe sort of animal-like stupor in which his father had lived, somethinghappened to him. A railroad pushed its way down along the river to his townand he got a job as man of all work for the station master. He swept outthe station, put trunks on trains, mowed the grass in the station yard andhelped in a hundred odd ways the man who held the combined jobs of ticketseller, baggage master and telegraph operator at the little out-of-the-wayplace.

　　Hugh began a little to awaken. He lived with his employer, Henry Shepard,and his wife, Sarah Shepard, and for the first time in his life sat downregularly at table. His life, lying on the river bank through long summerafternoons or sitting perfectly still for endless hours in a boat, had bredin him a dreamy detached outlook on life. He found it hard to be definiteand to do definite things, but for all his stupidity the boy had a greatstore of patience, a heritage perhaps from his mother. In his new place thestation master's wife, Sarah Shepard, a sharp-tongued, good-natured woman,who hated the town and the people among whom fate had thrown her, scoldedat him all day long. She treated him like a child of six, told him howto sit at table, how to hold his fork when he ate, how to address peoplewho came to the house or to the station. The mother in her was aroused byHugh's helplessness and, having no children of her own, she began to takethe tall awkward boy to her heart. She was a small woman and when she stoodin the house scolding the great stupid boy who stared down at her withhis small perplexed eyes, the two made a picture that afforded endlessamusement to her husband, a short fat bald-headed man who went about cladin blue overalls and a blue cotton shirt. Coming to the back door of hishouse, that was within a stone's throw of the station, Henry Shepard stoodwith his hand on the door-jamb and watched the woman and the boy. Abovethe scolding voice of the woman his own voice arose. "Look out, Hugh," hecalled. "Be on the jump, lad! Perk yourself up. She'll be biting you if youdon't go mighty careful in there."

　　Hugh got little money for his work at the railroad station but for thefirst time in his life he began to fare well. Henry Shepard bought theboy clothes, and his wife, Sarah, who was a master of the art of cooking,loaded the table with good things to eat. Hugh ate until both the man andwoman declared he would burst if he did not stop. Then when they were notlooking he went into the station yard and crawling under a bush went tosleep. The station master came to look for him. He cut a switch from thebush and began to beat the boy's bare feet. Hugh awoke and was overcomewith confusion. He got to his feet and stood trembling, half afraid he wasto be driven away from his new home. The man and the confused blushing boyconfronted each other for a moment and then the man adopted the methodof his wife and began to scold. He was annoyed at what he thought theboy's indolence and found a hundred little tasks for him to do. He devotedhimself to finding tasks for Hugh, and when he could think of no new ones,invented them. "We will have to keep the big lazy fellow on the jump.That's the secret of things," he said to his wife.

　　The boy learned to keep his naturally indolent body moving and his cloudedsleepy mind fixed on definite things. For hours he plodded straight ahead,doing over and over some appointed task. He forgot the purpose of the jobhe had been given to do and did it because it was a job and would keep himawake. One morning he was told to sweep the station platform and as hisemployer had gone away without giving him additional tasks and as he wasafraid that if he sat down he would fall into the odd detached kind ofstupor in which he had spent so large a part of his life, he continuedto sweep for two or three hours. The station platform was built of roughboards and Hugh's arms were very powerful. The broom he was using began togo to pieces. Bits of it flew about and after an hour's work the platformlooked more uncleanly than when he began. Sarah Shepard came to the door ofher house and stood watching. She was about to call to him and to scold himagain for his stupidity when a new impulse came to her. She saw the seriousdetermined look on the boy's long gaunt face and a flash of understandingcame to her. Tears came into her eyes and her arms ached to take the greatboy and hold him tightly against her breast. With all her mother's soul shewanted to protect Hugh from a world she was sure would treat him alwaysas a beast of burden and would take no account of what she thought of asthe handicap of his birth. Her morning's work was done and without sayinganything to Hugh, who continued to go up and down the platform laboriouslysweeping, she went out at the front door of the house and to one ofthe town stores. There she bought a half dozen books, a geography, anarithmetic, a speller and two or three readers. She had made up her mind tobecome Hugh McVey's school teacher and with characteristic energy did notput the matter off, but went about it at once. When she got back to herhouse and saw the boy still going doggedly up and down the platform,she did not scold but spoke to him with a new gentleness in her manner."Well, my boy, you may put the broom away now and come to the house," shesuggested. "I've made up my mind to take you for my own boy and I don'twant to be ashamed of you. If you're going to live with me I can't have yougrowing up to be a lazy good-for-nothing like your father and the other menin this hole of a place. You'll have to learn things and I suppose I'llhave to be your teacher.

　　"Come on over to the house at once," she added sharply, making a quickmotion with her hand to the boy who with the broom in his hands stoodstupidly staring. "When a job is to be done there's no use putting it off.It's going to be hard work to make an educated man of you, but it has to bedone. We might as well begin on your lessons at once."

　　* * * * *Hugh McVey lived with Henry Shepard and his wife until he became a grownman. After Sarah Shepard became his school teacher things began to gobetter for him. The scolding of the New England woman, that had butaccentuated his awkwardness and stupidity, came to an end and life in hisadopted home became so quiet and peaceful that the boy thought of himselfas one who had come into a kind of paradise. For a time the two olderpeople talked of sending him to the town school, but the woman objected.She had begun to feel so close to Hugh that he seemed a part of her ownflesh and blood and the thought of him, so huge and ungainly, sitting in aschool room with the children of the town, annoyed and irritated her. Inimagination she saw him being laughed at by other boys and could not bearthe thought. She did not like the people of the town and did not want Hughto associate with them.

　　Sarah Shepard had come from a people and a country quite different inits aspect from that in which she now lived. Her own people, frugal NewEnglanders, had come West in the year after the Civil War to take upcut-over timber land in the southern end of the state of Michigan. Thedaughter was a grown girl when her father and mother took up the westwardjourney, and after they arrived at the new home, had worked with her fatherin the fields. The land was covered with huge stumps and was difficult tofarm but the New Englanders were accustomed to difficulties and were notdiscouraged. The land was deep and rich and the people who had settled uponit were poor but hopeful. They felt that every day of hard work done inclearing the land was like laying up treasure against the future. In NewEngland they had fought against a hard climate and had managed to find aliving on stony unproductive soil. The milder climate and the rich deepsoil of Michigan was, they felt, full of promise. Sarah's father like mostof his neighbors had gone into debt for his land and for tools with whichto clear and work it and every year spent most of his earnings in payinginterest on a mortgage held by a banker in a nearby town, but that did notdiscourage him. He whistled as he went about his work and spoke often of afuture of ease and plenty. "In a few years and when the land is clearedwe'll make money hand over fist," he declared.

　　When Sarah grew into young womanhood and went about among the young peoplein the new country, she heard much talk of mortgages and of the difficultyof making ends meet, but every one spoke of the hard conditions astemporary. In every mind the future was bright with promise. Throughoutthe whole Mid-American country, in Ohio, Northern Indiana and Illinois,Wisconsin and Iowa a hopeful spirit prevailed. In every breast hope foughta successful war with poverty and discouragement. Optimism got into theblood of the children and later led to the same kind of hopeful courageousdevelopment of the whole western country. The sons and daughters of thesehardy people no doubt had their minds too steadily fixed on the problemof the paying off of mortgages and getting on in the world, but there wascourage in them. If they, with the frugal and sometimes niggardly NewEnglanders from whom they were sprung, have given modern American life atoo material flavor, they have at least created a land in which a lessdeterminedly materialistic people may in their turn live in comfort.

　　In the midst of the little hopeless community of beaten men and yellowdefeated women on the bank of the Mississippi River, the woman who hadbecome Hugh McVey's second mother and in whose veins flowed the blood ofthe pioneers, felt herself undefeated and unbeatable. She and her husbandwould, she felt, stay in the Missouri town for a while and then move onto a larger town and a better position in life. They would move on and upuntil the little fat man was a railroad president or a millionaire. It wasthe way things were done. She had no doubt of the future. "Do everythingwell," she said to her husband, who was perfectly satisfied with hisposition in life and had no exalted notions as to his future. "Remember tomake your reports out neatly and clearly. Show them you can do perfectlythe task given you to do, and you will be given a chance at a larger task.Some day when you least expect it something will happen. You will be calledup into a position of power. We won't be compelled to stay in this hole ofa place very long."

　　The ambitious energetic little woman, who had taken the son of the indolentfarm hand to her heart, constantly talked to him of her own people. Everyafternoon when her housework was done she took the boy into the front roomof the house and spent hours laboring with him over his lessons. She workedupon the problem of rooting the stupidity and dullness out of his mindas her father had worked at the problem of rooting the stumps out of theMichigan land. After the lesson for the day had been gone over and overuntil Hugh was in a stupor of mental weariness, she put the books aside andtalked to him. With glowing fervor she made for him a picture of her ownyouth and the people and places where she had lived. In the picture sherepresented the New Englanders of the Michigan farming community as astrong god-like race, always honest, always frugal, and always pushingahead. His own people she utterly condemned. She pitied him for theblood in his veins. The boy had then and all his life certain physicaldifficulties she could never understand. The blood did not flow freelythrough his long body. His feet and hands were always cold and there wasfor him an almost sensual satisfaction to be had from just lying perfectlystill in the station yard and letting the hot sun beat down on him.

　　Sarah Shepard looked upon what she called Hugh's laziness as a thing ofthe spirit. "You have got to get over it," she declared. "Look at your ownpeople--poor white trash--how lazy and shiftless they are. You can't belike them. It's a sin to be so dreamy and worthless."

　　Swept along by the energetic spirit of the woman, Hugh fought to overcomehis inclination to give himself up to vaporous dreams. He became convincedthat his own people were really of inferior stock, that they were to bekept away from and not to be taken into account. During the first yearafter he came to live with the Shepards, he sometimes gave way to a desireto return to his old lazy life with his father in the shack by the river.People got off steamboats at the town and took the train to other townslying back from the river. He earned a little money by carrying trunksfilled with clothes or traveling men's samples up an incline from thesteamboat landing to the railroad station. Even at fourteen the strength inhis long gaunt body was so great that he could out-lift any man in town,and he put one of the trunks on his shoulder and walked slowly and stolidlyaway with it as a farm horse might have walked along a country road with aboy of six perched on his back.

　　The money earned in this way Hugh for a time gave to his father, and whenthe man had become stupid with drink he grew quarrelsome and demanded thatthe boy return to live with him. Hugh had not the spirit to refuse andsometimes did not want to refuse. When neither the station master nor hiswife was about he slipped away and went with his father to sit for a halfday with his back against the wall of the fishing shack, his soul at peace.In the sunlight he sat and stretched forth his long legs. His small sleepyeyes stared out over the river. A delicious feeling crept over him and forthe moment he thought of himself as completely happy and made up his mindthat he did not want to return again to the railroad station and to thewoman who was so determined to arouse him and make of him a man of her ownpeople.

　　Hugh looked at his father asleep and snoring in the long grass on theriver bank. An odd feeling of disloyalty crept over him and he becameuncomfortable. The man's mouth was open and he snored lustily. From hisgreasy and threadbare clothing arose the smell of fish. Flies gatheredin swarms and alighted on his face. Disgust took possession of Hugh. Aflickering but ever recurring light came into his eyes. With all thestrength of his awakening soul he struggled against the desire to give wayto the inclination to stretch himself out beside the man and sleep. Thewords of the New England woman, who was, he knew, striving to lift him outof slothfulness and ugliness into some brighter and better way of life,echoed dimly in his mind. When he arose and went back along the streetto the station master's house and when the woman there looked at himreproachfully and muttered words about the poor white trash of the town, hewas ashamed and looked at the floor.

　　Hugh began to hate his own father and his own people. He connected the manwho had bred him with the dreaded inclination toward sloth in himself.When the farmhand came to the station and demanded the money he had earnedby carrying trunks, he turned away and went across a dusty road to theShepard's house. After a year or two he paid no more attention to thedissolute farmhand who came occasionally to the station to mutter and swearat him; and, when he had earned a little money, gave it to the woman tokeep for him. "Well," he said, speaking slowly and with the hesitatingdrawl characteristic of his people, "if you give me time I'll learn. I wantto be what you want me to be. If you stick to me I'll try to make a man ofmyself."

　　* * * * *Hugh McVey lived in the Missouri town under the tutelage of SarahShepard until he was nineteen years old. Then the station master gave uprailroading and went back to Michigan. Sarah Shepard's father had diedafter having cleared one hundred and twenty acres of the cut-over timberland and it had been left to her. The dream that had for years lurked inthe back of the little woman's mind and in which she saw bald-headed,good-natured Henry Shepard become a power in the railroad world had begunto fade. In newspapers and magazines she read constantly of other men who,starting from a humble position in the railroad service, soon became richand powerful, but nothing of the kind seemed likely to happen to herhusband. Under her watchful eye he did his work well and carefully butnothing came of it. Officials of the railroad sometimes passed throughthe town riding in private cars hitched to the end of one of the throughtrains, but the trains did not stop and the officials did not alight and,calling Henry out of the station, reward his faithfulness by piling newresponsibilities upon him, as railroad officials did in such cases in thestories she read. When her father died and she saw a chance to again turnher face eastward and to live again among her own people, she told herhusband to resign his position with the air of one accepting an undeserveddefeat. The station master managed to get Hugh appointed in his place, andthe two people went away one gray morning in October, leaving the tallungainly young man in charge of affairs. He had books to keep, freightwaybills to make out, messages to receive, dozens of definite things to do.Early in the morning before the train that was to take her away, came tothe station, Sarah Shepard called the young man to her and repeated theinstructions she had so often given her husband. "Do everything neatly andcarefully," she said. "Show yourself worthy of the trust that has beengiven you."

　　The New England woman wanted to assure the boy, as she had so often assuredher husband, that if he would but work hard and faithfully promotion wouldinevitably come; but in the face of the fact that Henry Shepard had foryears done without criticism the work Hugh was to do and had receivedneither praise nor blame from those above him, she found it impossible tosay the words that arose to her lips. The woman and the son of the peopleamong whom she had lived for five years and had so often condemned, stoodbeside each other in embarrassed silence. Stripped of her assurance as tothe purpose of life and unable to repeat her accustomed formula, SarahShepard had nothing to say. Hugh's tall figure, leaning against the postthat supported the roof of the front porch of the little house where shehad taught him his lessons day after day, seemed to her suddenly old andshe thought his long solemn face suggested a wisdom older and more maturethan her own. An odd revulsion of feeling swept over her. For the momentshe began to doubt the advisability of trying to be smart and to get on inlife. If Hugh had been somewhat smaller of frame so that her mind couldhave taken hold of the fact of his youth and immaturity, she would no doubthave taken him into her arms and said words regarding her doubts. Insteadshe also became silent and the minutes slipped away as the two people stoodbefore each other and stared at the floor of the porch. When the train onwhich she was to leave blew a warning whistle, and Henry Shepard called toher from the station platform, she put a hand on the lapel of Hugh's coatand drawing his face down, for the first time kissed him on the cheek.Tears came into her eyes and into the eyes of the young man. When hestepped across the porch to get her bag Hugh stumbled awkwardly against achair. "Well, you do the best you can here," Sarah Shepard said quickly andthen out of long habit and half unconsciously did repeat her formula. "Dolittle things well and big opportunities are bound to come," she declaredas she walked briskly along beside Hugh across the narrow road and to thestation and the train that was to bear her away.

　　After the departure of Sarah and Henry Shepard Hugh continued to strugglewith his inclination to give way to dreams. It seemed to him a struggleit was necessary to win in order that he might show his respect andappreciation of the woman who had spent so many long hours laboring withhim. Although, under her tutelage, he had received a better education thanany other young man of the river town, he had lost none of his physicaldesire to sit in the sun and do nothing. When he worked, every task hadto be consciously carried on from minute to minute. After the woman left,there were days when he sat in the chair in the telegraph office and foughta desperate battle with himself. A queer determined light shone in hissmall gray eyes. He arose from the chair and walked up and down the stationplatform. Each time as he lifted one of his long feet and set it slowlydown a special little effort had to be made. To move about at all was apainful performance, something he did not want to do. All physical actswere to him dull but necessary parts of his training for a vague andglorious future that was to come to him some day in a brighter and morebeautiful land that lay in the direction thought of rather indefinitely asthe East. "If I do not move and keep moving I'll become like father, likeall of the people about here," Hugh said to himself. He thought of the manwho had bred him and whom he occasionally saw drifting aimlessly alongMain Street or sleeping away a drunken stupor on the river bank. He wasdisgusted with him and had come to share the opinion the station master'swife had always held concerning the people of the Missouri village."They're a lot of miserable lazy louts," she had declared a thousand times,and Hugh, agreed with her, but sometimes wondered if in the end he mightnot also become a lazy lout. That possibility he knew was in him and forthe sake of the woman as well as for his own sake he was determined itshould not be so.

　　The truth is that the people of Mudcat Landing were totally unlike any ofthe people Sarah Shepard had ever known and unlike the people Hugh was toknow during his mature life. He who had come from a people not smart was tolive among smart energetic men and women and be called a big man by themwithout in the least understanding what they were talking about.

　　Practically all of the people of Hugh's home town were of Southern origin.Living originally in a land where all physical labor was performed byslaves, they had come to have a deep aversion to physical labor. In theSouth their fathers, having no money to buy slaves of their own and beingunwilling to compete with slave labor, had tried to live without labor. Forthe most part they lived in the mountains and the hill country of Kentuckyand Tennessee, on land too poor and unproductive to be thought worthcultivating by their rich slave-owning neighbors of the valleys and plains.Their food was meager and of an enervating sameness and their bodiesdegenerate. Children grew up long and gaunt and yellow like badly nourishedplants. Vague indefinite hungers took hold of them and they gave themselvesover to dreams. The more energetic among them, sensing dimly the unfairnessof their position in life, became vicious and dangerous. Feuds startedamong them and they killed each other to express their hatred of life.When, in the years preceding the Civil War, a few of them pushed northalong the rivers and settled in Southern Indiana and Illinois and inEastern Missouri and Arkansas, they seemed to have exhausted their energyin making the voyage and slipped quickly back into their old slothful wayof life. Their impulse to emigrate did not carry them far and but a few ofthem ever reached the rich corn lands of central Indiana, Illinois or Iowaor the equally rich land back from the river in Missouri or Arkansas. InSouthern Indiana and Illinois they were merged into the life about them andwith the infusion of new blood they a little awoke. They have tempered thequality of the peoples of those regions, made them perhaps less harshlyenergetic than their forefathers, the pioneers. In many of the Missouri andArkansas river towns they have changed but little. A visitor to these partsmay see them there to-day, long, gaunt, and lazy, sleeping their lives awayand awakening out of their stupor only at long intervals and at the call ofhunger.

　　As for Hugh McVey, he stayed in his home town and among his own people fora year after the departure of the man and woman who had been father andmother to him, and then he also departed. All through the year he workedconstantly to cure himself of the curse of indolence. When he awoke in themorning he did not dare lie in bed for a moment for fear indolence wouldovercome him and he would not be able to arise at all. Getting out of bedat once he dressed and went to the station. During the day there was notmuch work to be done and he walked for hours up and down the stationplatform. When he sat down he at once took up a book and put his mind towork. When the pages of the book became indistinct before his eyes and hefelt within him the inclination to drift off into dreams, he again aroseand walked up and down the platform. Having accepted the New Englandwoman's opinion of his own people and not wanting to associate with them,his life became utterly lonely and his loneliness also drove him to labor.

　　Something happened to him. Although his body would not and never did becomeactive, his mind began suddenly to work with feverish eagerness. The vaguethoughts and feelings that had always been a part of him but that had beenindefinite, ill-defined things, like clouds floating far away in a hazysky, began to grow definite. In the evening after his work was done and hehad locked the station for the night, he did not go to the town hotel wherehe had taken a room and where he ate his meals, but wandered about town andalong the road that ran south beside the great mysterious river. A hundrednew and definite desires and hungers awoke in him. He began to want to talkwith people, to know men and most of all to know women, but the disgust forhis fellows in the town, engendered in him by Sarah Shepard's words andmost of all by the things in his nature that were like their natures, madehim draw back. When in the fall at the end of the year after the Shepardshad left and he began living alone, his father was killed in a senselessquarrel with a drunken river man over the ownership of a dog, a sudden, andwhat seemed to him at the moment heroic resolution came to him. He wentearly one morning to one of the town's two saloon keepers, a man who hadbeen his father's' nearest approach to a friend and companion, and gavehim money to bury the dead man. Then he wired to the headquarters of therailroad company telling them to send a man to Mudcat Landing to take hisplace. On the afternoon of the day on which his father was buried, hebought himself a handbag and packed his few belongings. Then he sat downalone on the steps of the railroad station to wait for the evening trainthat would bring the man who was to replace him and that would at the sametime take him away. He did not know where he intended to go, but knew thathe wanted to push out into a new land and get among new people. He thoughthe would go east and north. He remembered the long summer evenings in theriver town when the station master slept and his wife talked. The boy wholistened had wanted to sleep also, but with the eyes of Sarah Shepard fixedon him, had not dared to do so. The woman had talked of a land dotted withtowns where the houses were all painted in bright colors, where young girlsdressed in white dresses went about in the evening, walking under treesbeside streets paved with bricks, where there was no dust or mud, wherestores were gay bright places filled with beautiful wares that the peoplehad money to buy in abundance and where every one was alive and doingthings worth while and none was slothful and lazy. The boy who had nowbecome a man wanted to go to such a place. His work in the railroad stationhad given him some idea of the geography of the country and, although hecould not have told whether the woman who had talked so enticingly had inmind her childhood in New England or her girlhood in Michigan, he knew ina general way that to reach the land and the people who were to show himby their lives the better way to form his own life, he must go east. Hedecided that the further east he went the more beautiful life would become,and that he had better not try going too far in the beginning. "I'll gointo the northern part of Indiana or Ohio," he told himself. "There must bebeautiful towns in those places."

　　Hugh was boyishly eager to get on his way and to become at once a part ofthe life in a new place. The gradual awakening of his mind had given himcourage, and he thought of himself as armed and ready for association withmen. He wanted to become acquainted with and be the friend of people whoselives were beautifully lived and who were themselves beautiful and full ofsignificance. As he sat on the steps of the railroad station in the poorlittle Missouri town with his bag beside him, and thought of all the thingshe wanted to do in life, his mind became so eager and restless that some ofits restlessness was transmitted to his body. For perhaps the first timein his life he arose without conscious effort and walked up and down thestation platform out of an excess of energy. He thought he could not bearto wait until the train came and brought the man who was to take his place."Well, I'm going away, I'm going away to be a man among men," he said tohimself over and over. The saying became a kind of refrain and he said itunconsciously. As he repeated the words his heart beat high in anticipationof the future he thought lay before him.