But as usual, the yarns I retailed struck in upon my own imagination, too ... just as had my earlier stories of killing Indians. Particularly the tale I had related of having seen dead Chinamen in heaps with their heads lopped off. A nightmare of this imaginary episode began to come to me. And another dream I had--of a huge Boxer, with a cutlass, standing over me. And he was about to carve me piecemeal while I lay bound and helpless before him. The dream persisted so strongly that, after I awoke, I still seemed to see him standing in a corner of my room. And I cried aloud. And felt foolish when it brought my father in. So I stopped making up adventures, especially the disagreeable ones, because they eventually had more effect on me than they did on my auditors. * * * * * My father had changed boarding places ... but, as usual, it was not better food, but a little, dark widow that attracted him to that boarding house. * * * * * I now devoted myself exclusively to poetry--the reading of it. I always had a book in my pocket. I read even at meals, despite my father's protests that it was bad-mannered. * * * * * Breasted's book store, down in Newark, was where I was nearly always to be found, in the late afternoons. It was there, in the murky light of a dying twilight, that I came Upon the book that has meant more to my life than any other book ever written.... For a long time I had known of John Keats, that there was such a poet. But, in the fever of my adolescence, in the ferment of my tramp-life, I had not yet procured his poetry.... Now, here were his complete works, right at hand, in one volume ... a damaged but typographically intact copy.... I had, once before, dipped into his _Endymion_ and had been discouraged ... but this time I began to read him with his very first lines--his dedication to Leigh Hunt, beginning: "Glory and loveliness have passed away." Then I went on to a pastoral piece: "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill." I forgot where I was. A new world of beauty was opened to me.... I read and read.... "Come, Gregory, it's time to close"--a voice at my elbow. It was Breasted's assistant, a little, curious man who reminded me of my sky-pilot at Sydney. He, also, wore a black, long-tailed coat. He was known as "the perfessor." "You've been standing here as quiet as a crane for three hours." "How much do you want for this book?" "A quarter ... for you!" He always affected to make me special reductions, as an old customer.... A quarter was all I had. I paid for my Keats, and walked home. Walked? I went with wings on each heel. I was as genuinely converted to a new life as a sinner is converted to the Christian religion. I lit the light in my room. All night I read and re-read, not a whit sleepy or tired. I went for a week in a mad dream, my face shining and glowing with inner ecstasy and happiness.