I drew more and more apart to myself. Always looked upon as queer by the good, bourgeois families that surrounded us, I was now considered madder still. * * * * * How wonderful it would be to become a hermit on some far mountain side, wearing a grey robe, clear-browed and calmly speculative under the stars--or, maybe,--more wonderful: a singer for men, a travelling minstrel--in each case, whether minstrel or hermit, whether teaching great doctrines or singing great songs for all the world--to have come to me, as a pilgrim seeking enlightenment, the most beautiful maiden in the world, one who was innocent of what man meant. And together we would learn the mystery of life, and live in mutual purity and innocence. * * * * * The strangeness of my physical person lured me. I marvelled at, scrutinised intimately the wonder of myself. I was insatiable in my curiosities. * * * * * My discovery of my body, and my books, held me in equal bondage. I neglected my work in the drying room. My father was vexed. He'd hunt me out of the obscure corners back of the hanging sheets of composite where I hid, absorbed in myself and the book I held, and would run me back to work. * * * * * One day, in the factory, two other boys on an errand from another department, came back where I sat, in a hidden nook, reading Thompson's _Seasons_. One of them spit over my shoulder, between the leaves. I leaped to my feet, infuriated, and a fight began. The desecration of my beloved poetry gave me such angry strength that I struck out lustily and dropped both of them.... Rushing in on the uproar and blaming me for it, my father seized me by the collar. He booted the other boys off, who were by this time on their feet again, took me up into the water-tower, and beat me with one of the heavy sticks, with metal clips on it, that was used for hanging the composite on. Still trembling with the fight, I shook with a superadded ague of fear. My father's chastisement brought back to me with a chill the remembrance of the beatings Uncle Landon had given me. * * * * * "By God, Johnnie, this is the only thing there's left to do with you." He flung me aside. I lay there sobbing. "Tell me, my boy, what _is_ the matter with you?" he asked, softening. Unlike Landon, he was usually gentle with me. He seldom treated me harshly. "Father, I don't want to work any more." "Don't want to work?... but you quit school just to _go_ to work, at your own wish!" "I want to go back to school!" "Back to school?... you'll be behind the rest by now." "I've been studying a lot by myself," I replied, forgetting the feel of the stick already and absorbed in the new idea.