Even with this, however, through it all lingers that sense of utter weariness, almost to the point of exhaustion. During the day I manage to escape the worst consequences by keeping my mind busy when absent from the office, and the early evening or night generally also is passed without too much worry. This leaves the periods of dull care at the office, hoping and waiting for the hour of getting away and bedtime and later night. A proof of how much I have retrogressed physically is, that from October to December, 1908, during my first few months in New York, I was able to work from eight in the morning until six at night, and three or four nights a week, with only an hour’s break for lunch and ... Now, working less than seven hours a day, the day every week is longer, more tiresome. The weakening of my powers has been gradual and to a certain extent unnoticeable, but it has been steady, inexorable, and now I am face to face with a condition which means the end of everything if continued for too long. During these years in my heart I have protested against it all. Taken away from school when I was leading the class, without any great effort either, by circumstances, I began a business career of hope and with boundless ambition and half-formed boyish ideals. The fact that I left school of my own accord outwardly does not detract from the fact that circumstances were gradually making it more imperative and I only took the bull by the horns, as I have done many times since. I remember with great vividness an incident of my early business career, when with ... store. I used to keep a credit book of returned goods, and had considerable dealings in this way with the girls of the various departments. I was then rather indifferent to feminine charms, although awakening sexual passion was entering into my emotional and mental states, and had been for a year or so. I was then fifteen or sixteen (I do not know whether this happened before or after my birthday). One of the girls, a rather flippant, but as I look back, a shrewd observer, came to my window in the office (which was on a similar plan to a bank, I having one window and the cashier another) with something or about something returned. I scowled for some reason or other, probably because I had a pressure of work. She then made an observation, the prophecy of which has been amply demonstrated--“you are a boy now, but you will never be a youth,” and something about my jumping into manhood. She was only a department store girl, but she hit the nail on the head exactly that time, as subsequent events have proven. In those days, after my little stories for ... I liked reading and probably looked forward to college at some time in the future in an indefinite way. I was very earnest and ambitious about my work, which continued more or less until some time last year, when the increasing tired feeling, nervousness, changing ideas, ideals and different outlook combined to bring on rapidly my