“I don’t know where I was born, Lucy, or who my father was.  My mother was the mistress of an Italian called Luigi Giuseppi.  She died a rotten death, leaving me at six to Luigi.  He treated me badly but he needed me in his gambling business, and he kept me by telling me how bad my mother was and threatening to tell other people.  From the time I was eight till I was fourteen, I don’t suppose a day passed without his telling me of the rot I had inherited from my mother.  I began gambling for him when I was about ten.

“When I was fourteen I was arrested in a gambling raid and paroled in the care of John Seaton, a lawyer.  He took me to the Grand Canyon.  He and Frank Allen, a guide, suggested to me the idea that Luigi’s mistress was not my mother.  Such an idea never had occurred to me before.  They first gave it to me in the bottom of the Canyon.

“I can’t put into writing what that suggestion, coupled with my first view of the Canyon meant to me.  But it was as if I had met God face to face and He had taken pity on a dirty little street mucker and He had lifted me in His great hands and had told me to try to be good and He would help me.  I never had believed in God before.  And I came back from that trip resolved to put up a fight.

“Mr. Seaton began the search for my folks right off, but he didn’t find anything before he died, which was only a year later.  But I made him a solemn promise I’d go through college and study law and I’m going to do it.  He was not a rich man but he left me enough money to see me through college.  In one more year I’ll finish the High School.  I still play cards once in a while in a joint on Sixth Avenue.  I know it’s wrong and I’m trying hard to quit.  But sometimes I just can’t help it, especially when I’m worried.

“Luigi will be in the pen another seven years.  When he comes out I am going to beat him up till he tells me about my mother and father.  Though perhaps he’s been telling the truth!”

“May 13.—­Lucy, I made a speech in third year rhetoric to-day and the teacher kept me after class.  He said he’d been watching me for some time and he wanted to tell me he thought I’d make a great orator, some day.  He’s going to give me special training out of school hours, for nothing.  I’m darned lucky.  If a guy’s going into politics, oratory’s the biggest help.  But to be famous as a speaker isn’t why I’m going into politics.  I’m going to clean Minetta Lane up.  I’m going to try to fix it in New York so’s a fellow couldn’t have a mother and a stepfather like mine.  You know what I mean, don’t you?  Darn it, a kid suffers so!  You know that joint on Sixth Avenue where I go and play cards once in a while?  Well, it was raided to-day.  I wonder what Mr. Seaton would have said if he’d been alive and I’d been there and got pinched again!