knocked out of me--with not only abundant ability, but the stern resolve to transact any business which might be entrusted to me, and just rotted to despair. No wonder men go to the devil, and enlist to fight the whole establishment of organized society. I almost went. When I look back at it now it seems like a miracle that I did not go wholly. Pride saved me. It survived long after hope died. Sometimes, I even thought of the pistol I had in my trunk. But I had made up my mind to live and win. There, too, came in Pride. I could not bear to think of Lilian Poole and Peck. How she would congratulate herself and how Peck would gloat! No, I could not give him that satisfaction. Peck did me a good turn there. A strong enmity, well based, is not always without good results; but Peck should not smear my memory with pretended pity. So I starved, but held on. When I got so that I could endure it no longer, I used to go out and walk up and down the streets--sometimes the fashionable streets--and look at the handsome residences and the fine carriages and automobiles flashing by and the handsomely dressed people passing, and recall that I was as good as they--in my heart, I thought, better. Some of them with kind faces I used to fancy my friends; but that they did not know I was in town. This conceit helped me. And at times I used to fancy that I lived in a particular house, and owned a particular team: thus living for a brief moment like a child in "making pictures." A house is sometimes personal and well-nigh human to me. It appears to have qualities almost human and to express them on its face: kindness, hostility, arrogance, breadth or narrowness, and brutal selfishness are often graven on its front. I have often felt that I could tell from the outside of a house the characteristics of the people within. Arrogance, ignorance, want of tact, pretentiousness and display, spoke from every massy doorway and gaudy decoration with a loudness which would have shocked a savage. This being so, what characters some of the wealthy people of our cities must have! It must be one of the compensations of the poor that the houses of the rich are often so hideous and unhome-like.