Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/bookaboutmyself00drei Transcriber’s note: Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BOOKS BY THEODORE DREISER SISTER CARRIE JENNIE GERHARDT THE FINANCIER THE TITAN THE GENIUS A TRAVELER AT FORTY A HOOSIER HOLIDAY PLAYS OF THE NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL THE HAND OF THE POTTER FREE AND OTHER STORIES TWELVE MEN HEY RUB-A-DUB-DUB A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF THEODORE DREISER Boni and Liveright Publishers New York Copyright, 1922, by Boni and Liveright, Inc. —————— All rights reserved First edition November, 1922 Second edition December, 1922 Printed in the United States of America ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF CHAPTER I DURING the year 1890 I had been formulating my first dim notion as to what it was I wanted to do in life. For two years and more I had been reading Eugene Field’s “Sharps and Flats,” a column he wrote daily for the Chicago _Daily News_, and through this, the various phases of life which he suggested in a humorous though at times romantic way, I was beginning to suspect, vaguely at first, that I wanted to write, possibly something like that. Nothing else that I had so far read—novels, plays, poems, histories—gave me quite the same feeling for constructive thought as did the matter of his daily notes, poems, and aphorisms, which were of Chicago principally, whereas nearly all others dealt with foreign scenes and people.