The widow gave me a trunkful of books she had taken for a board bill. Among them I found a battered old volume of Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo , on which I put in many nights. This sharpened my appetite for reading, and I went around secondhand bookstores, and got hold of the D’Artagnan tales and devoured them. Then Les Misérables , and on to the master, Dickens. The books so fired me with the desire for travel, adventure, romance, that I was miserable most of the time. As my money dwindled I resolved to find a job. I’d ask the landlady for advice.

I found her out in front, scrubbing the steps, red in the face and vicious looking. I told her I was thinking of going to work.