In this way I expended part of my prodigious supply of feeling and energy.  But I had also another way of reducing my creative pressure.  Occasionally, from sheer excess of emotion, I would burst into verse, of a quality not to be doubted.  Of that quality the reader shall judge, for I am going to quote a “creation” written under circumstances which, to say the least, were adverse.  Before writing these lines I had never attempted verse in my life—­barring intentionally inane doggerel.  And, as I now judge these lines, it is probably true that even yet I have never written a poem.  Nevertheless, my involuntary, almost automatic outburst is at least suggestive of the fervor that was in me.  These fourteen lines were written within thirty minutes of the time I first conceived the idea; and I present them substantially as they first took form.  From a psychological standpoint at least, I am told, they are not without interest.

    LIGHT

    Man’s darkest hour is the hour before he’s born,
    Another is the hour just before the Dawn;
    From Darkness unto Life and Light he leaps,
    To Life but once,—­to Light as oft as God wills he should. 
    ’Tis God’s own secret, why
    Some live long, and others early die;
    For Life depends on Light, and Light on God,
    Who hath given to Man the perfect knowledge
    That Grim Despair and Sorrow end in Light
    And Life everlasting, in realms
    Where darkest Darkness becomes Light;
    But not the Light Man knows,
    Which only is Light
    Because God told Man so.

These verses, which breathe religion, were written in an environment which was anything but religious.  With curses of ward-mates ringing in my ears, some subconscious part of me seemed to force me to write at its dictation.  I was far from being in a pious frame of mind myself, and the quality of my thought surprised me then—­as it does now.

XXV

Though I continued to respect my clothes, I did not at once cease to tear such material as would serve me in my scientific investigations.  Gravity being conquered, it was inevitable that I should devote some of my time to the invention of a flying-machine.  This was soon perfected—­in my mind; and all I needed, that I might test the device, was my liberty.  As usual I was unable to explain how I should produce the result which I so confidently foretold.  But I believed and proclaimed that I should, erelong, fly to St. Louis and claim and receive the one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward offered by the Commission of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition for the most efficient airship to be exhibited.  The moment the thought winged its way through my mind, I had not only a flying-machine, but a fortune in the bank.  Being where I could not dissipate my riches, I became a lavish verbal spender.  I was in a mood to buy anything, and I whiled away many an hour