IT MAY seem strange that, even before this turning-point in my life, I should have cherished the ambition to be a writer. As I see it today, my only qualifications consisted in the two facts that I had nothing to tell and that, had I had anything to tell, I should not have known how to tell it.
     With the latter deficiency I am still struggling today; the other I remedied during the years that followed; in fact, I remedied it with a vengeance; and in 1893, at the end of the year, I settled down to write the story of what I had lived through since August, 1892. The result was a manuscript of, at a conservative estimate, between five and six hundred thousand words which I called A Search for America.
     While it is not my intention, here, to retell the story, in spite of the fact that the book as it was published in 1927, is, to a certain extent, fiction, I must place the writing of it into its proper setting.
     Between the two dates mentioned I had successively been a waiter, a book agent, a factory hand, a roust-about on board a lake steamer - an episode omitted from the printed book - and a hobo or itinerant farm-labourer in the West. The one thing which I might have done with some credit to myself and some profit to others, it never occurred to me even to try - and that was teaching. In Europe I had held no qualifications whatever; in America it was to be my lot to find out that, in no matter

what occupation except that of an unskilled labourer, the single qualification needed was "experience"; and experience, in no matter what, was the one thing I lacked.
     However, I had lived; and I had lived to some purpose. Between the spring and the winter of 1893, now twenty-one years old, I had come up, from somewhere near St. Louis, Missouri, into Canada, doing whatever offered in a labour market where the demand exceeded the supply. I had worked in haying and in the harvest of wheat, earning my board and, in addition, anywhere between one and a half and four dollars a day. Reaching the Canadian border some time in October - it must have been somewhere in the south-western corner of what was then the Territory of Assiniboia and is today the Province of Saskatchewan - I had the great good luck of finding a job on a "company farm", that is a farm owned by a syndicate and operated by a salaried superintendent for profit. As far as I remember, nothing was grown there but wheat, though no doubt the feed for the stock needed was grown as well. I had nothing whatever to do with the growing or even the harvesting of the crops; I was hired as a teamster, and I owed the job to one single fact, namely, that of not being afraid of handling any kind of horse, not even the team I was offered which consisted of four aged stallions. It was not a "steady job"; it could not last beyond a few weeks; but it gave me the chance to add another fifty dollars to the slender store of money which I carried about with me, sewn into the lining of my breeches -breeches I had worn when riding at Thurow.
     The work consisted in driving a grain-tank holding a hundred bushels of wheat to the nearest town, thirty miles north, unloading, and returning the next day to the farm; to start again for the town on the third day, and so on.

     I shall have to come back to this episode in another connection. Let it suffice here to say that the work was done before the month was out. I drew my pay and was faced with the question what to do with my winter. The money I had amounted to between two and three hundred dollars. I still had the minimum of clothes which I needed - the greater part of my precious European wardrobe had been sold at New York to provide bread and butter. Above all, however, I felt I had a story to tell.
     Everywhere the year's work was done; I could not count on finding another job, at least in the country. I made up my mind to get to the city of Winnipeg, in Manitoba, and to dig myself in for the purpose of writing. I had meanwhile learned that one does not need twenty dollars a day to subsist. Any kind of a shack on the outskirts of the urban area would do; a hundred dollars would buy all the supplies I needed; and next spring I should go south again to start all over, but with a reserve of at least a hundred dollars.
     During the year that had gone by, I had added a new accomplishment to my qualifications, that of riding any sort of train without paying toll to its owners. One day, leaving a suitcase behind, and taking nothing but a bundle strapped to my back, I started from Shaunavon to "beat it" to Winnipeg, travelling by means of a flat-car in a freight-train. Whenever the train stopped, I dropped off and hid in the ditch, behind a clump of bushes if they were available; or behind some building. When the train was about to resume its journey, I hopped onto my flat-car and proceeded with it. I became so confident of my ability to do so that I left my bundle behind when I alighted; it might have impeded me in the gymnastics

required between the piles of lumber or whatever it was that constituted the load. Thus, in the course of a week or so, I reached the outskirts of Winnipeg, undiscovered by the crew of the train.
     I felt positive that I had my story solidly planned. While its framework and the chronology were to be largely fictitious, there was not to be a single episode of the stay in America - and, in the nature of things, the book was to be episodic - which had not been lived through. But, for the first time in my life I experienced that strange reluctance to convert a fine plan into a written record with which I was to become familiar later on. A book which one dreams of is very like a woman one loves, at least when one is young: one delights in seeing her and dreaming about her; one fears to touch the hem of her garments.
     Now, that fall was a glorious season. There was perpetual sunshine; and the autumnal warmth of the Indian Summer lingered beyond its usual term. There was the Red River; and there were the woods. In such seasons I am to this day subject to violent attacks of Wanderlust. I postponed the decisive step of renting a shelter. I looked at some likely places in the north of the city, on the banks of the river; I even picked one which I thought would do. But I procrastinated. At night I slept anywhere, in an open freight-car on the track, in a straw-stack, in some deserted building; and finally I struck out along the river, towards its mouth. For provender I bought a loaf of bread, a piece of cheese, or whatever a cross-roads store might offer. Had it not been for the fact that I was running away from my task - which was clearly to write that book of mine - I should have been supremely happy. The landscape - the bush country of the wilds,

which starts a few miles north of Winnipeg, even today - fascinated me by its very flatness and monotony. I was not, as I had so often been in the past, bent on seeing sights. I was bent on deeply, exhaustively tasting the flavour of the present. I did not even wish for company; the shock of the break in my life was still felt too violently not to fill me with the desire to be utterly alone. I carried a few thin books; and within sight of the great lake into which the river empties, I sat and read; and at other times I sat and stared out over the vast expanse of the sleeping waters. Here, there were neither abandoned buildings nor straw-stacks to spend my nights in; but there were fallen, and often half-rotted logs aplenty which I leaned together in the form of a teepee; and there was a superabundance of dry leaves which I gathered for my bed.
     For no reason that I can remember, except perhaps the exposed character of the lake-shore, I struck inland, in a north-west direction, following logging-trails and occasional stretches of road. I allowed myself to be guided by the whims of the trail. What did it matter where I was? The woods were all about; and that was enough.
     Unfortunately for my enjoyment of marvellous day after day, the nights were beginning to be cold. It was November now; and the moment the sun had set, the temperature fell below the freezing point. In the mornings the glade was white. Though I had money in my pocket, the whole hoarded earnings of a season, there were, in this sparsely-settled district, no towns or villages where I might have secured a night's lodging. So, for the first time, I enquired instead for a winter's job. I had gone too far from the city to return there before severe

weather set in. The few scattered homesteads which I found in the bush were pioneer affairs with but a few acres cleared where no help was wanted. The houses, built of logs for no more than the immediate needs of the settlers, were filled. Nobody was prepared to take even a paying boarder. In a spirit of recklessness, curious to see where I might land, I went on, still northward. Till, somewhere in the neighbourhood of what is today the Icelandic town of Gimli - whether it existed already or not I do not know - I came upon a cluster of homesteads resembling an actual settlement. Even here farms were a mile or two apart; but people knew of their neighbours; and at the time the fact made the district seem almost crowded. While every settler I spoke to laughed when I asked about the "chances of a job", all promptly mentioned one man, an old man who lived alone and who kept a herd of cattle; he was reported to have said that he needed help.
     The moment I found him I knew that here was the chance I was looking for. He was a tall, lank, old man who looked me over critically, yet not without a humorous twinkle in his grey eyes. He made no secret of the fact that he liked me and liked the idea of having me with him for the winter. For once I made no secret, either, of my circumstances, nor of the serious handicap under which I laboured, namely, that of having "an education" and wishing to do some writing; as a rule I had already learned to conceal such disqualifications for the life I was leading. The trouble was that he wanted to engage me for the full year, at a hundred and twenty dollars, or ten dollars a month. In summer I could make vastly better wages elsewhere. But suddenly it struck me with tre-

mendous force that, so far, I had only "run through the world"; and that, what I needed more than anything else, was a little leisure in a half-way settled existence. Here I should be out of that world of the mad chase after the dollar and the non-essentials which I could not make up my mind whether I loved or hated. I accepted.
     I might just as well despatch the external result of that episode before I describe what made it memorable to me in my life as a writer.
     When, in February, my twenty-second birthday came around, I was, more or less, in rebellion. I had worked on the place for nearly three months - we shall see in a moment, how - but I had not yet received a penny in wages. Did the old man mean me to wait till the end of my year? It was true, I counted myself lucky in not having to spend money on my living. But I had some small incidental expenses: I smoked; I had to have socks, overalls, underwear. There was an Armenian store within walking distance - about four miles away; and once a week its bearded and becaftaned owner went south, probably to Selkirk on the Red River, to replenish his stock and to fetch mail and papers for the settlers, driving when he did so an ancient, stiff-legged gelding hitched to a little wagon or sleigh. I had ordered some books from a store in Winnipeg; my employer was a subscriber to one of the city dailies. Was it wise to go on defraying my current expenses out of savings? Already, having savings, I dreamt of returning to Europe, if only for a trip.
     One morning I cornered the old man. How about some money, on account?
     He hemmed and hawed; he stepped from one foot to the other.

     Meanwhile, in my embarrassment, I kept on talking, expounding the necessity I was under of getting some money.
     At last he put hand to pocket and pulled out a crumpled two-dollar bill. "That," he said, "is all I can give you just now. It's all I've got. I'll pay you the balance when I've threshed next fall."
     As I said, it was February; and fall was far away; but, willy-nilly, I accepted the situation. He had flour stored away for the year; and we had eggs and milk.
     I let him keep his money; for he, too, needed tobacco -which he chewed - if nothing else till summer came; and then, when he had a crop in the ground, some twenty-five acres which were cleared and broken, he would have credit with the Armenian who also took his cream to town whenever he went.
     I will add right here that, ultimately, I got my wages for the time I had spent on the place, and for six more months in advance, plus thirty or forty dollars which, in the interval, the employer had borrowed from his hired man.
     When I think about it today, the whole year's adventure which, in actual fact, lengthened out into a year and a half, seems to be telescoped together into twenty-four hours during which I wrote that whole book which, in its first version, was to comprise half a million words. What I see when I close my eyes is as follows.
     The snow lies deep in the bush; and it is bitterly cold. The summer that intervened does not count; what counts to me is only the winter. So the time of the year is invariably February - the hardest month; and the time of day, at the opening of the vision, is the latter part of the night. The air is so utterly calm, with the tempera-

ture standing unchanged at its lowest level, that a thread of smoke from the roof of the two-storey log house seems to be suspended into the flue-pipe rather than to rise out of it. Behind the house, in the northern margin of the little clearing, stand two large stables, likewise of logs, their roofs, like that of the house, hooded with two, three feet of snow which overhangs at the eaves.
     That is what I see from the outside.
     Inside, the house is pitch-dark; it is tenanted by two men; one of them the elderly Irishman, sixty-nine years old, a widower, deserted by his children who have gone to the city, a plasterer by trade. The other is I.
     As the glittering stars revolve overhead in their orbits, the older man stirs in his bed, rolls over, and strikes a match. Seeing by the nickel watch which he lifts from the chair by his bedside that it is five o'clock, he raises his voice and sings out, "Phil!"
     Instantly awake, for this is a nightly-repeated performance, I reply at once: "All right!"
     In the bitter-cold darkness, working briskly, I don overalls, sheepskin, boot-packs, mitts, and ear-flapped cap - all of which, at the very moment of waking, I had thrust under the covers of the bed to warm them up; yet I shiver as garment after garment is pulled over some part of my body. As a last thing I grope blindly about on top of an upended box which serves as my dresser, closing my mittened hand about some small book to slip into the pocket on my hip. Then, still in the dark, I descend the creaking stairway and proceed to the kitchen in the rear of the house, under the Irishman's bedroom.
     There, with stiffening fingers, I light a coal-oil lantern and; with it dangling from one hand, I shake down the fire, adding what fuel is needed. Then, taking a deep

breath, I issue forth into the frosty, star-lit night where the first, forced breath hits my lungs like a blow. For a second I stand, shivering and stamping my feet.
     Arrived in the horse stable which I always take first, as it is the nearer to the house, I hang my lantern to a wooden peg between stalls, reach for the manure fork, and begin to clean the floor, throwing manure and used-up litter through a trap which I open in the wall.
     Every now and then, my back not being any too strong for such work, I stop to rest for a while, not without enjoying the pleasant, steaming warmth which coats everything with fringes of hoarfrost and the pungent, ammonia-laden air which I like to this day. And in this interval, leaning, under the lantern, against the stanchion between the stalls - in order to subdue the stab between my shoulder-blades - I pull out my book and read some short passage. My reading is apt to be curious matter for a farm-hand to carry. Just as likely as not it is Plato or Homer; though it may be Shakespeare or Pascal or Keats. Fortunately I have already acquired the habit of endlessly rereading books which I know. Since even today I cannot afford to buy books, I have retained that habit. This reading is a desperate attempt to swim, not to sink. The sort of life I am leading is well enough so long as it can be looked upon as a lark - as I mostly do - as a completion of my education which, in some respects, has proved so strangely wanting. But I need the assurance that the world of music, poetry, and art has not vanished while I am "wandering with the antipodes".
     And then I go on with my work; and at last, to the music of their nickers, I water the horses and feed them; and, having finished with this part of my task, I go on to the other stable and do the same for the cows.

     Since all the stock has to be brushed down, too, this takes till about seven or even half-past. Time does not matter much on this farm, at least not in winter.
     At the house, meanwhile, Mr. Irishman, having lazily risen at last and dressed in the kitchen where it is warm, is preparing breakfast - or flapjacks and tea; for breakfast, dinner, and supper are all alike, coming as they do out of tea-chest and flour-bag. And after breakfast there is an hour or so during which I go upstairs to shake up my bed and to sweep my floor though it does not need it; and on occasion even that of the Irishman which does need it - when I feel like it; and that task is invariably followed by the ceremony, performed in the kitchen, of shaving with the razor which, eight years ago, had been my father's birthday present to me - at Paris. As for the Irishman, he has long since given up making his bed or shaving his chin. His bed he throws together, after a fashion, when he is ready to get into it at night; and his beard he trims once a week, on Sunday, with a pair of dull scissors, accompanying the operation with a series of mumbled curses, and sometimes dancing about on one foot.
     If, after shaving, there is still time left, we sit about and read the papers if they have recently arrived at the Armenian store; or, we sit and talk, provided always there is something to talk about; if not, we just sit.
     And then something strange happens. A dozen children arrive on the farm.
     For neighbours, Mr. Irishman has, here a Ukrainian, there a Pole; in the third place a Russo-German from Volhynia or the Bug Valley; in a fourth, perhaps, a Swede. All are prolific; but, were it not for my employer, the children would grow up illiterate. Being a man of vision

and an empire-builder to boot, the Irishman, realizing that these children will one day be handicapped unless they are able to read and write and to do their sums, has made the rounds and told the settlers to send their tots -in wintertime when the work is slack so they can be spared- to his place where he will teach them of the three R's what he himself knows. In summertime, of course, everyone above the age of six is busy in field and woods in this district where seneca root and other treasures grow wild.
     But, now he has caught this strange bird as a hired man, he strikes a bargain with him. After breakfast, and at his own leisure, he attends to the rest of the morning chores himself, to the milking, the felling of trees for the purpose of clearing land, and the hauling of fuel from the bush, and other things, while the hired man does the teaching, in the bare parlour of the house where the children sit on the floor. That was the entirely casual and fortuitous beginning of my later work, no less casual, as a teacher.
     In this unorthodox pedagogical work, I am variously engaged from nine or half-past until about three in the afternoon, with an undefined break for a meal towards noon or whenever Mr. Irishman has it ready. Since the nearest neighbour lives a mile away, and the farthest four miles; and since the dark comes around five, it is necessary to dismiss school early. Occasionally, on blizzardy days, I dismiss at noon; and half a dozen times during the winter the weather is such that not one of the little ones appears in the morning - my good luck.
     For, before the evening chores have to be done, the eternally repeated tasks of the farm, there is an interval of perhaps two hours after school; and that interval, no

matter when it starts, even though it start in the morning, has, by prescription, become my own.
     Hardly is the last of the children out of sight when I run upstairs, three steps at a time, to enter my frozen room -frozen, for the fluepipe goes only through the Irishman's quarters.
     And there, sheep-skin on my back, lined gloves on stiffening fingers, I sit on my bed and write by the light of candle or lantern...
     Thus that book came into being which, with all its faults, and in spite of its juvenile, cock-sure tone, seems to me to have captured a not inconsiderable part of what I had lived through, in an external sense, during the year and a half preceding its writing.
     When it was finished in this, its first form, I left the place in the bush; I could not afford to remain there; for I knew that I could make better wages elsewhere. The book, I sent to a publisher, by express, insuring the manuscript for one hundred thousand dollars...
     It promptly came back, of course, so promptly that it took my breath away; and it came by express, charges collect. I know today, of course, that the publisher had not even had it read. Perhaps he had had the number of words counted; but that was certainly all. In the course of the next two or three years I reduced it to about two-thirds of its bulk, that is, to somewhere between three and four hundred thousand words. And next I wrote out, by hand, six clean copies, using both sides of the paper, no two copies agreeing verbatim; and when they were finished, one after the other, I launched them on their rounds, for I secured long lists of publishers in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain; and I kept the copies circulating for years, thereby violating a rule unknown to me which

brands it as "unethical" on the part of an author to offer his work to more than one publisher at a time. I might add that, as success failed to come, I translated the book into French and German and offered it in other parts of Europe as well - in vain.
     Meanwhile, under identical and similar conditions, other books came into being; and for years, for decades, they made the rounds, meeting with nothing but the most absolute indifference on the part of the publishing trade. But nothing discouraged me; nothing convinced me that I was on the wrong tack. Every now and then I rewrote the Search for America in its entirety, making it shorter every time - till, in 1920, I rewrote it a last time; but of that later on. I also rewrote my other books from time to time. Over a thousand publishers have seen my manuscripts; and not one, in returning them, insured a shipment for one cent. Yet I never, for one moment, so far, drew the conclusion that these books were not worth printing.
     What did I do when I left the farm in the bush?
     It was now that I established a regular routine, broken only by five trips to Europe made within twenty years. That routine remained essentially the same for the eighteen years to follow, so that, at this distance of time, the two decades present to my memory a record of monotonous sameness.
     Always, in early summer, I seemed to awake; it was rarely later than the end of May or the beginning of June that I went south, to Kansas or Colorado where, for the time being, I found work in haying. Seasons vary, of course; and when I set out I could never tell at what stage of the work I should come in. Nor did it matter. I was soon well enough known among farmers to com-

mand a job when I needed it. While I was neither as strong nor as fast as some or even most of the others, I was more reliable and persevering; and wherever I worked, I kept my horses shining. No matter at what stage of the work I appeared, I could be relied upon to go through with it. I always accepted the slackening- with the consequent drop in wages - that intervened between haying and harvesting and remained until threshing was done. From that moment on I moved north in such a way as to arrive at certain predetermined places at as nearly as possible the precise time when threshing started. Since men were always scarcest in threshing, and wages, therefore, highest, this gave me the advantage that, for two or three months, I kept the remuneration I received at its peak. There were, of course, breaks occasioned by the weather; and it took me a few years to establish my routine; but, once established, that routine served well enough. It was rare that the season between June and October yielded me a surplus of less than two hundred and fifty dollars. The years 1893 and 1894 had given me a reserve which I tried to keep at the level of two hundred dollars and which I never touched; it was deposited in a Winnipeg bank. Slowly, in this manner, I made my way back to Canada.
     The sort of thing I did, and the environment in which I did it, are well enough and faithfully enough depicted in the Fourth Book of A Search for America where the methods of my moving about are also described. Here, it remains only to be said that, what in that novel seems to fill a single season, in reality filled twenty years. The book was written when that phase of my life was only just opening; but, in order to round it off, as a novel, I intentionally let it appear, in my later recastings, as if that

sort of life had been a fleeting episode instead of filling a third of my life.
     I might also say, in this connection, that certain aspects of my life were necessarily neglected in that work. Thus, since only one visit is recorded to what, in the book, is called the Mackenzie farm, nothing is said of the fact that I returned to it year after year, and became well-enough known to both superintendent and owner, to be expected in the fall. The same thing held good for numbers of other places.
     As for my winters, I did one of three things. When I was very anxious to do a considerable amount of writing and studying, I rented a shack somewhere, at Moose Jaw, Brandon, Winnipeg, and dug myself in, as it were; when there was no such desire and, instead, perhaps, a shortage of funds - it happened two or three times in the period under discussion - I tried, always successfully, to get a job for the winter, feeding stock perhaps. I did not receive any wages for that sort of work; but I had board and lodging and a modicum of leisure for anything I might, after all, wish to do. When I chose the first of these two alternatives, I succeeded, as a rule, in keeping the cost of my living, that is, of food, tobacco, light, heat, and rent, below ten dollars a month; when I chose the second, I kept my expenses, to be defrayed out of savings, down to perhaps one-fifth of that sum. In either case I am not counting the books I bought. At all times I saw to it that I had replenished my working wardrobe during the summer. Whenever I was settled for the winter, I sent for my suitcase which, the previous spring, I had left with some friendly farmer.
     The third thing I did was to go to Europe. Between 1894 and 1910 I did this five times, or, on an average, once

every three years. Within the interval I invariably managed to lay by, over and above my reserve which I never touched, between three and five hundred dollars. When it was nearer the former figure, I went on a cattle boat where, at the time, one could still secure passage without paying for it. The thing had not yet become the standard mode of travel for impecunious trippers which, I understand, it is now, when you pay for the privilege of working your way. When my savings were nearer the upper limit, I travelled as a third-class passenger. Invariably I reached the port of embarkation - Montreal or New York - by "beating my way" on a train, a mode of progress in which I had become extraordinarily expert.
     With my travels in Europe I could readily fill a book if that sort of writing appealed to me. Here I will restrict myself to one or two examples of what I did there. My suitcase still contained two complete outfits: a lounge suit and a full-dress suit, with all the appropriate linen, neckties, shoes, and so on. Mostly I went to Italy; it was the last result of my archeological studies and my explorations in the history of Italian painting. The route I chose depended on the state of my purse; I have always been able, since the great break, to travel, in France, on a dollar a day; in Germany, on half that much; both sums exclusive of transportation. Sometimes I reduced the latter expense to nothing, by walking; thus, on one occasion, having arrived rather earlier than usual, I footed it from Cologne to Venice; on another, I bought a cheap fourteenth-hand bicycle which, before the end of my trip, I sold at a profit, for I had improved it beyond recognition, at a cost of a few cents for paint and polish.

     Once, having gone through France and northern Italy at a leisurely pace, I arrived at Rome in December. It was the year 1899; I remember it by the fact that I was present, in St. Peter's, at the great millennial midnight celebration of January 1, 1900. In this case one thing worried me; I had spent rather more than I had counted on, and I saw myself faced with the possibility, yes, the probability, if I remained in Rome as long as I had planned, of having to draw on my reserves in the bank at Winnipeg in order to get home again. I had my ticket from Liverpool to Montreal. But how get to Liverpool without "beating" or begging my way? I doubted whether "beating it" was possible in Europe.
     But, as in the case of 1893, in the bush country north of Winnipeg, I went forward, not backward. I have never been one to retreat.
     I knew Rome better than most of the professional guides. I had all sorts of ways of opening doors which remained closed to the average traveller. I had one faculty which was unimpaired: that of winning the services, very much de haut en bas, of underlings whom I never even attempted to tip; I shook hands with them instead; it always worked.
     Within an hour of my arrival in the station at Rome, where I thought matters over, I had made up my mind to gamble on my appearance. Instead of modestly walking to some inconspicuous hostelry, carrying my suit-case, I took a cab to convey me to the Hotel de Rome, or whatever its name was, on the Piazza del Popolo. I engaged two rooms, changed from my lounge suit into evening clothes and, since it was near dinner time, descended into the crowded lobby.

     The very first person I saw was a titled lady whom I had met twice before; once as a young girl when my mother was still alive, once on board a liner, on one of my voyages in my heyday of Europe. She, being alone, greeted me at once; she had, of course, no slightest idea of what, in the interval, had happened to me. She exclaimed at my not having changed a bit; and I, of course, though untruthfully, returned the compliment. I asked her to have dinner with me.
     The first revelation I had of time not having dealt smoothly with her, either, came when, by the slightest of nods, she indicated a bejewelled fine lady who entered on the arm of an elderly, distinguished-looking man.
     "Voilà ma remplaçante," she said.
     I drew my eyebrows up. "Et l'homme?"
     "Mon mari d'antan."
     "Vous êtes . . ."
     She nodded. "Je le suis."
     I laughed, supplying the missing word: divorcée, in my mind.
     I remember every word of that brief, poignant conversation over the table; and to this day I am puzzled to explain why we should have been speaking French in that crowded, polyglot dining-room when she was as English as anyone could well be.
     The lady was not, of course, in her very first youth; but, unless my memory deceives me, she was not yet forty, either; and the arts of the dressing-table made her appear at least ten years younger than she was. I was twenty-eight; and I set myself the task of charming her and succeeded. I spoke of the mid-west of the American continent; she must have had the impression that I had been "a planter" there. I have said that she was alone; but

     I was nevertheless struck with the fact that she nodded to scores of people as they entered to take their seats; and most of them were men; all of them, English.
     Dinner over, she asked me whether I played chess; and on my answering in the affirmative, she invited me to come to her sitting-room for a game.
     In the course of the next few hours - for I did not leave her till the small hours of the night - she told me her recent story; of her disastrous marriage and her divorce; and, after a brief debate with myself, I told her mine -which wakened all her feminine and maternal instincts. I confided to her that I meant to act as a cicerone to wealthy people; and she promptly offered to take me under her wing.
     The result was that, the very next day, I conducted a small party of three, Lady X being one of them, through the museum of the Vatican which, a dozen years ago, had been the scene of my most arduous studies. Incidentally, during the forenoon, I met an official of the Vatican whom I had known in the past; and I had an opportunity of exchanging a few words with him. As a result, I could announce, when we returned to the hotel for lunch, that, next morning, I was going to conduct a party through such wings of the Vatican, and through its famous gardens, as were inaccessible to all but specially accredited people. At once I was asked how many I was prepared to take. I thought for a moment and then declared that, apart from myself and - with a bow to the lady whose acknowledged cavalier I was rapidly becoming - I should take twelve. I was requested not to accept anyone but the party which my present clients would collect for me. The hour of our departure from the hotel was fixed then and there.

     I had hardly returned to my room when there was a knock at my door. A maid handed in an envelope addressed to me; it contained a five-pound note. But the next day brought me five times as much.
     I do not know whether official guides had at the time to be licensed; I do know that, within a few days, I was politely summoned to the office of the gérant of the hotel. Most apologetically he asked a few questions regarding my qualifications. I hesitated how to deal with him. I decided to take the high horse. Incidentally, not at all acknowledging his right to question me, I slipped in a few words regarding my antecedents at Rome, naming the scholar in charge of the archeological institute subsidized by the German government. He bowed and changed his tone. Shortly he asked me whether I cared to be placed on the list of the guides recommended by the hotel. I knew that I had him where I wanted him and declined, saying that I cared to take only friends. I knew that this was playing it high; but I wanted to make sure that there would be no further interference. It meant, of course, that I could, henceforth, never strike a bargain beforehand. But I felt confident - and I soon found I was right - that there was no need. My clients either felt instinctively that they must do the right thing; or Lady X tipped them off. I never asked her; it was a delicate point: I do know that, when I took her to theatre or opera, she invariably allowed me to pay for our seats.
     Towards the end of January she left Rome for South America; and my earnings had dwindled, too. Most of the guests of the hotel were there for the winter; and there were comparatively few new-comers. Characteristically I did not change my place of residence. Rooms

and meals at this hotel cost me over ten dollars a day; but life was extraordinarily pleasant. The fact that I had been the recognized cavaliere of Lady X had established me on a footing of equality with this international crowd. There were excursions, balls, and picnics. I let myself drift.
     February came; and I fell ill. I was in bed only for a few days; but the break gave me time to think. I was not yet suffering from the sort of life I had led in America; I saw that I could leave it any time I wanted to. I felt confident that, henceforth, I could even undertake to lead "personally-conducted tours" to Europe - such as, in America, were organized by railway and steamship companies. I might add right here that I tried it later on; but invariably some university professor who knew nothing of Europe got the job while I went without. Just as, at the time when I felt the need of being classified as a graduate of a Canadian university, I had to be examined by men whose knowledge in some cases was inferior to mine. When I recovered from my brief illness, I felt it was my destiny to return to America.
     But I was unexpectedly in funds. I went on to Naples, Capri, Ischia, Sorento, Amalfi; and thence on a brief trip to Sicily where I visited Palermo, Messina, Taormina, Girgenti. But I lived with the peasants, shunning the great hotels. And when my money was spent, I began my trek "home" - for such it seemed by now.
     Once more, however, during that trip north, I ran out of funds; and again I was in luck. Somewhere in the train between Florence and Milan- I fell in with a young man from Pittsburg [sic], the son of a coal-magnate who, by a "cultured" mother, had been sent to Europe to acquire some knowledge of, and taste for, Italian painting, sculp-

ture, and architecture. The only thing he had so far acquired was the typical American contempt for Italy because it had no coal; but he had the equally typical admiration for Germany which had had a tremendous industrial development. He feared the moment when, a few months later, he would have to face his mother.
     I laughed at him; and the outcome of it was that he invited me to stay with him for a month, at his expense. As for my loss of time, he would "make it right with me" before we parted.
     For a week or two, I lugged him from church to church at Milan, and from gallery to gallery; and then we went on to Venice where I repeated the process. I verily believe that, when he went home, he was able to satisfy his mother. I know that he had actually enjoyed it all.
     What, however, I remember best of this episode was our parting.
     He was scheduled to catch a certain boat at Cherbourg and on the morning when he had to leave for Paris, he settled the bill at the hotel where we were staying, somewhere along the Grand Canal. Since I was standing by when he did so, I was acutely conscious of the fact that he settled his bill, but not mine. At Milan, he had, as a matter of course, settled both. Having done so, he turned to me and said that he must start half an hour early, for he must drop in at his bank, he, too, being out of funds. "I'll fix you up at the station," he added.
     His baggage was put into a gondola; and I gave the directions to the gondoliere. Within a few minutes that worthy stopped at the steps leading up to the bank; and the young man from Pittsburg [sic] ran in. It took him an unconscionable time to attend to his business; and when he came running down to the gondola, there was only the

narrowest margin for catching the train. I called to the gondoliere to hurry and promised him an extra lira if he got us to the station in time.
     As a matter of fact, the baggage master refused to check the trunks; but the young man shed money right and left; and at last, accompanied by a porter who carried his hand-bag, we were running to catch the train which was already in motion. As I said, the young man had left a trail of money behind; and by some sign-language the porter conveyed that information to the train-crew. He made it.
     But none of his money had found its way into my pocket.
     Inside the wagon-lit, I saw my late companion frantically running to find his compartment and, having found it, wrestling with the window which refused to open. However, he succeeded at last; and out came his hand. Meanwhile I had been running alongside the train; but at that very moment I came to the end of the platform.
     "Good luck, old man!" he called out; "and thanks most awfully!"
     But I missed his hand, for I had to stop if I did not want to fall; as it was, I had trouble not to lose my balance. But from his hand fluttered a folded paper, promptly caught up in the draught sucked along by the train which was rapidly accelerating its pace. But my eye remained glued on it; and I marked the spot where it fell; so that, when the train was gone, I could climb down to the side of the embankment and pick it up. It was a thousand-lire bill, the equivalent, at the time, of between one and two hundred dollars . . .