As for the carpenter, what I remembered of him on the evening in the hotel in the city of New York was just a kind of quiet assurance in his figure remembered from boyhood. The old workman had spoken to mother of young workmen in his employ. “They aren’t learning their trade properly,” he said. “Everything is cut in the factories now and the young fellows get no chance. They can stand looking at a tree and they do not know what can be done with it ... while I ... well, I hope it don’t sound like bragging too much ... I know my trade.” III You see what a confusion! Something was happening to me that is always happening. Try as much as I may I cannot become a man of culture. At my door stood a man waiting to be admitted and there stood I--thinking of a carpenter in a town of my boyhood. I was making the man at the door feel embarrassed by my silent scrutiny of him and that I did not want. He was in a nervous distraught condition and I was making him every moment more distraught. His fingers played with his hat nervously. And then he broke the silence by plunging into an apology. “I’ve been very anxious to see you. There are things I have been wanting to ask you about. There is something important to me perhaps you can tell me. Well, you see, I thought--sometime when you are not very busy, when you are unoccupied.... I dare say you are a very busy man. To tell the truth now I did not hope to find you unoccupied when I came in thus, at this hour. You may be going out to dine. You are fixing your tie. It’s a nice tie.... I like it. What I thought was that I could perhaps be so fortunate as to make an appointment with you. Oh, I know well enough you must be a busy man.” The deuce! I did not like all this fussiness. I wanted to shout at the man standing at my door and say ... “to the devil with you!” You see, I wanted to be more rude than I had already been--leaving him standing there in that way. He was nervous and distraught and already he had made me nervous and distraught. “Do come in. Sit there on the edge of the bed. It’s the most comfortable place. You see I have but one chair,” I said, making a motion with my hand. As a matter of fact there were other chairs in the room but they were covered with clothing. I had taken off one suit and put on another. We began at once to talk, or rather he talked, sitting on the edge of the bed and facing me. How nervous he was! His fingers twitched. “Well now, I really did not expect I would find you unoccupied when I came in here at this hour. I am living, for the time being in this very hotel--on the floor below. What I thought was that I would try to make an appointment with you. ‘We’ll have a talk’--that’s what I thought.”