But be that as it may, however, there is mother lying in bed in a lonely cabin on another long sandy beach, also on the Gulf of Mexico. (In my fanciful life I have always had a hunger for the warm South.) Mother has been honorably married to my fanciful father on that very evening when she went with him from among her fellow-countrymen, sitting by the fire on that other beach, and after just such a metamorphosis of his character as she had come to expect through having read American novels and through having seen two or three American plays produced in the capital of her native land. After having secured the horses from the stable of the oyster thief they had ridden off together and had come at last into a deep forest of magnolia trees in blossom. A southern moon came up into the sky and so soft was the night, so gentle the breezes from the now distant sea, and so sweet the hum of insect life under their horses’ feet, that mother found herself speaking of her lost home and of her mother. To my fanciful father the combination--the deep forest, the scent of the magnolia blossoms and the word “mother”--together with the fact that he was alone in a dark place with a virgin, an innocent one, these things were all irresistible to him. The metamorphosis spoken of above took place, and he proposes marriage and on the spot proposed to live a better life. And so they rode together out of the forest and were married, but, in his case, the metamorphosis did not hold. Within a few months he had gone back to his old life, leaving mother alone in a strange land until the time should come when I, having been born, could take up the task of being her protector and guardian. And now I am being born. It is late in the afternoon of a still hot day and I, having just been ushered into the world by the aid of a fisherman’s wife, who also does duty as a midwife in that isolated place and who has now left to return again late at night--I, having been so born, am lying on the bed beside mother and thinking my first thoughts. In my own fancy I was, from the very first, a remarkable child and did not cry out as most newly born infants do, but lay buried in deep thought. In the little hut it is stifling hot, and flies and other winged insects of the warm South are buzzing in the air. Strange insects of gigantic size crawl over the walls and, from far-away somewhere, there comes the murmur of the sea. Mother is lying beside me, weak and wan. We lie there for a long time and, young as I am, I realize that she is tired and discouraged about life. “Why has not life in America turned out as it always did in the novels and plays?” she is asking herself; but I, having at that time still retained all my young courage and freshness of outlook, am not discouraged. There is a sound outside the cabin, the swishing sound of heavy feet dragged through the hot dry sands, and the low moaning sound of a woman crying.