After school, having no chores to do, I loitered around the hotel office. One day I found a dime novel entitled, The James Boys . I seized upon it and devoured it. After that I was always on the lookout for dime novels. I found a place where they were sold. I would buy one and trade with some other boy when it was read. If I could not trade it, I took it back to the store and the woman gave me a five-cent one for it. The nickel one was just as thrilling, but shorter. I read them all. Old Sleuth , Cap Collier , Frank Reade, Kit Carson. Father saw me with them, but never bothered me. One day he brought me one of Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales. I read it and was cured of the five- and ten-cent novels.

Between going to school and to the depot in the evening to see the train come in, and hanging around the hotel bar watching the town’s celebrated ones, especially the “bad men” who had killed or shot somebody somewhere sometime, I put in fairly busy days. The time flew.