* * * * * I was hanging on to my comfortable room at the Y.M.C.A. by bluff. I had not let on to the secretary that my Belton subsidy had stopped. Instead, I affected to be concerned about its delay. But I did this, not to be dishonest, but to gain time ... I was attempting to write tramp stories, after the manner of London, and expected to have one of them accepted soon, though none ever were.... Decker, the student-proprietor of the restaurant where I ate every day, was more astute. "Now look here, Gregory, you just can't run your bill up any higher." I already owed him fifteen dollars. I compounded with him by handing him over my _Illustrated History of English Literature_. It was like tearing flesh from my side to part with these volumes. And now I had no more credit at the Y.M.C.A. And I went back to Frank Randall, to apply again for my old room over his shop. He was using it now to store old stoves in. But he moved them out. With a sense of despair, compensated by a feeling of sacrifice for my poetry, I found myself once more back over the tinshop, the hammers sounding and crashing below. Old Blore, the cancer doctor, lived in a room in the front. All day long he sat drinking rum and sugar ... and shipping out his cancer cure, a white mixture like powdered sugar. Whether it did any good or not, he believed in it himself.... I have not written about him before ... there are so many odd characters that I came in contact with that I have not written about ... for this book is about myself.... But old Blore ... he came waddling back to me, drunk, as usual, on his rum and sugar. "Welcome back, Johnnie ... come on, you and Frank, into my room ... we've got to celebrate your return." Frank and I set down the stove we were moving, dusted our hands off, and followed. "But I won't drink any of your rum, Ed! It's got too much of a kick." "--nonsense ... good Jamaica rum never hurt nobody." We drank several rounds of rum and water, with sugar. And we jocosely joined together in singing the cancer doctor's favourite hymn--"We're drifting down the stream of time, we haven't got long to stay." Then Frank and Ed. retailed to me the practical jokes they had played on each other since I had been gone from among them ... on big Sam, the chocolate-coloured shoemaker who had his shop next door ... and an obscene one on a half-wit named Elmer, who was one of Frank's helpers ... that, though it was pretty raw, made me choke and gasp with merriment ... and they told me how, one night, they had wired the iron roof in the back, so that about ten cats that were mewling and quarrelling there, received a severe electric shock ... how funny and surprised they'd acted. * * * * *