My father rented a large, front room, with a closet for clothes, of a commuting feed merchant named Jenkins ... whose house stood three or four blocks distant from the works.

So we, my father and I, lived in that one room.  But I had it to myself most of the time, excepting at night, when we shared the big double bed.

* * * * *

Still only a child, I was affectionate toward him.  And, till he discouraged me, I kissed him good night every night, I liked the smell of the cigars he smoked.

I wanted my father to be more affectionate to me, to notice me more.  I thought that a father should be something intuitively understanding and sympathetic.  And mine was offish ... of a different species.. wearing his trousers always neatly pressed ... and his neckties—­he had them hanging in a neat, perfect row, never disarranged.  The ends of them were always pulled even over the smooth stick on which they hung.

I can see my father yet, as he stands before the mirror, painstakingly adjusting the tie he had chosen for the day’s wear.

I was not at all like him.  Where I took my knee britches off, there I dropped them.  They sprawled, as if half-alive, on the floor ... my shirt, clinging with one arm over a chair, as if to keep from falling to the floor.. my cap, flung hurriedly into a corner.

* * * * *

“Christ, Johnnie, won’t you ever learn to be neat or civilised?  What kind of a boy are you, anyhow?”

He thought I was stubborn, was determined not to obey him, for again and again I flung things about in the same disorder for which I was rebuked.  But a grey chaos was settling over me.  I trembled often like a person under a strange seizure.  My mind did not readily respond to questions.  It went here and there in a welter.  Day dreams chased through my mind one after another in hurried heaps of confusion.  I was lost ... groping ... in a curious new world of growing emotions leavened with grievous, shapeless thoughts.

Strange involuntary rhythms swung through my spirit and body.  Fantastic imaginations took possession of me.

And I prayed at night, kneeling, great waves of religious emotion going over me.  And when my father saw me praying by the bedside, I felt awkwardly, shamefully happy that he saw me.  And I took to posing a childishness, an innocence toward him.

Jenkins, the little stringy feed merchant, had two daughters, one thirteen, Alva, and another Silvia, who was fifteen or sixteen.. and a son, Jimmy, about seven....

It was over Alva and Silvia that my father and Jenkins used to come together, teasing me.  And, though the girls drew me with an enchanting curiosity, I would protest that I didn’t like girls ... that when I became full-grown I would never marry, but would study books and mind my business, single....

After this close, crafty, lascivious joking between them, my father would end proudly with—­