He was of the type of which American heroes are made, you see, and she had, in her young girlhood, read American novels. In American novels, as in American plays--as everyone knows--a man can, just as well as not, be a horse thief, a desperado, a child-kidnapper, a gentleman burglar, or a well-poisoner for years and years, and then, in an instant, become the sweetest and most amiable fellow possible, and with perfect manners too. It is one of the most interesting things about us Americans. No doubt it came to us from the English. It seems to be an Anglo-Saxon trait and a very lovely one too. All anyone need do is to mention in the presence of any one of us at any time the word “mother,” or leave one of us alone in the darkness in a forest in a lonely cabin on a mountain at night with a virgin. With some of us--that is to say, with those of us who have gone into politics--the same results can sometimes be had by speaking of the simple and humble laboring man, but it is the virgin that gets us every shot. In bringing out all the best in us she is a hundred per cent. efficient. In the presence of a virgin something like a dawn among mountains creeps over the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon and a gentle light comes into his eyes. If he has a dress suit anywhere about he goes and puts it on. Also he gets himself a shave and a hair cut, and you would be surprised to see how everything clears up after that. * * * * * I, however, digress. In my enthusiasm for my fellows I jerk myself too violently out of my boyhood. No boy could so wholeheartedly appreciate or understand our national traits. The story I had set myself down to tell was that of my own birth into the world of fancy--as opposed to the rather too realistic birth already depicted--and that, as I have explained, took place in Camden, Ohio. Very well, then, a year has passed and I am being born a second time, as it were, but this second birth is quite different from the one in the Ohio town. There is more punch to it. Reading of it will lift you, who have been patient enough to follow me so far, out of your common everyday humdrum existences. And if you have read Freud you will find it of additional interest that, in my fanciful birth, I have retained the very form and substance of my earthly mother while getting an entirely new father, whom I set up--making anything but a hero of him--only to sling mud at him. I am giving myself away to the initiated, that is certain.