I sat with some six or eight men by a large table in a room and some man was talking. He had been to Texas and knew things I would later have to know when I wrote advertisements for the plow company. I tried to appear attentive. There was a trick I had cultivated for just such occasions. I leaned a little forward and put my head in my hands, as though lost in deep thought. Some of the men in the room had heard that I wrote stories and had therefore concluded that I had a good brain. Americans have always a kind of tenderness for such cheats as I was being at the moment. Now they gave me credit for thinking deeply on the subject of plows, which was what I wanted. One of my employers--he was president of our company and his name was Barton--tried to cover up my obvious inattention. Already he had decided I would have to write the plow company’s advertisements but later he would tell me of all that had been said in the room. He would take me into his office and scold me gently, like a mother speaking to a badly behaved child. “Of course you didn’t hear a blamed word they said but here is the gist of it. I had to tell that big man with a beard that you were a genius. My God, what lies do I not tell on your account? When the little man with the glasses was speaking of agricultural conditions in Texas I was afraid that at any moment you might begin to whistle or sing.” Voices inside the room and voices inside myself too. Was something coming a bit clear at last? Now my fancy had taken me quite out of the room where the others talked of plows. One night, years before, when I was a young laborer and was beating my way westward on a freight train, a brakeman had succeeded in throwing me off the train in an Indiana town. I had remembered the place long afterward because of my embarrassment--walking about among people in my dirty torn clothes and with my dirty hands and face. However, I had a little money and after I had walked through the town to a country road I found a creek and bathed. Then I went back to town to a restaurant and bought food. It was a Saturday evening and the streets were filled with people. After it grew dark my torn clothes were not so much in evidence and by a street light near a church on a side street a girl smiled at me. Half undecided as to whether or not I had better try to follow and pick up an acquaintance, I stood for some moments by a tree staring after her. Then I bethought me that when she had seen me more closely and had seen the condition of my clothes she would in any event have nothing to do with me. As is natural to man, under such circumstances, I told myself I did not want her anyway and went off down another street.