By the time Mr. Dreiser had fairly formed the suspicion that, despite appearances, other people might not be much better than himself, his family had begun to break up, following the death of his mother, and he himself had been thrust into the world--or rather into Chicago, where the Dreisers by now lived--to earn his way. He did manage to spend one year at Indiana University, to the great improvement of his health, but with no positive intellectual benefit, so that he refused to waste a second year, which he might have had there. He confesses this, it should be said, in no boastful spirit. He was in fact made to realise at Bloomington that there were elements of knowledge which it would be useful to him to acquire--but he found the effort hopeless. His mind could not be constrained, and, besides, the deficiencies of his earlier schooling stood in his way. Hence he returned to Chicago, to become a collector for an easy-payment furniture shop. It was at this time that his feelings--scarcely yet his imagination or his reason--were awakened by the spectacle of “America on the make.” He found that spectacle intensely vital. At the same time, too, he was doing the first reading that really came home to him:--he was reading a daily column of Eugene Field’s in a Chicago newspaper. It gave him the notion of doing something like that himself, and sent him hunting for a post on a news-sheet. This he finally obtained, and at the reporter’s desk achieved his real education, one not beyond his grasp. His first instructor promptly informed him that “life was a God-damned stinking, treacherous game, and that nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of every thousand were bastards.” The truth of this generalisation Mr. Dreiser proceeded to establish for himself, by observation of those of life’s realities which constitute news, and by intercourse with fellow-journalists. He discovered that practically all men, high or low, were lying hypocrites, outwardly professing a fine morality, but privately violating this without hesitation whenever it would serve their turn in the pursuit of gain or in the satisfaction of lust.