No picture of these my opening days in St. Louis would be of the slightest import if I could not give a fairly satisfactory portrait of myself and of the blood-moods or so-called spiritual which were me. At that time I had already my full height, six feet one-and-one-half inches, and weighed only one hundred and thirty-seven pounds, so you can imagine my figure. Aside from one eye (the right) which was turned slightly outward from the line of vision, and a set of upper teeth which because of their exceptional size were crowded and so stood out too much, I had no particular except a general of feature. It was a source of worry to me all the time, because I imagined that it kept me from being interesting to women; which, , was not true—not to all women at least.  
Spiritually I was what might be called a melancholiac, crossed with a vivid of life. I doubt if any human being, however poetic or however material, ever looked upon the scenes of this world, material or spiritual, so called, with a more eye. My body was blazing with sex, as well as with a desire for material and social supremacy—to have wealth, to be in society—and yet I was too cowardly to make my way with women readily; rather, they made their way with me. Love of beauty as such—feminine beauty first and foremost, of course—was the dominating characteristic of all my moods: joy in the arch of an , the color of an eye, the flame of a lip or cheek, the romance of a situation, spring, trees, flowers, evening walks, the moon, the roundness of an arm or a , the delicate turn of an ankle or a foot, spring odors, moonlight under trees, a lighted lamp over a dark lawn—what tortures have I not endured because of these! My mind was on what love could bring me, once I had the prosperity and fame which somehow I foolishly fancied commanded love; and at the same time I was horribly by the thought that I should never have them, never; and that thought, for the most part, has been fulfilled.
 
In addition to this I was filled with an intense sympathy for the of others, life in all its helpless and poverty, the unsatisfied dreams of people, their sweaty , the things they were compelled to endure—nameless impositions, curses, brutalities—the things they would never have, their hungers, thirsts, half-formed dreams of pleasure, their gibbering and beaten resignations at the end. I have dry looking into what I deemed to be broken faces and the eyes of human failures. A shabby tumbledown district or , a drunken woman being before a , a child dying in a hospital, a man or woman injured in an accident—the times unbidden tears have leaped to my eyes and my throat has become and painful over scenes of the streets, the hospitals, the jails! I have cried so often that I have felt myself to be a weakling; at other times I have been proud of them and of my great rages against fate and the blundering, cruelty of life. If there is a God, conscious and personal, and He considers the state of man and the of His laws and His indifferences, how He must smile at little insect man’s estimate of Him! It is so flattering, so unreasoning, that only a devil could enjoy it.
 
I was happy enough in my work although at times lest all the pleasures that can come to youth from health, courage, wealth and opportunity should fail me while I was working and trying to get somewhere. I had health yet I imagined I had not because I was not a Sandow, an athlete, and my stomach, due to an undiscovered appendix, gave me some trouble. As to courage, when I examined myself in that direction I fancied that I had none at all. Would I slip out if a dangerous were anywhere? Certainly. Well, then, I was a coward. Could I stand up and defend myself against a man of my own height and weight? I doubted it, particularly if he were well-trained. In consequence, I was again a coward. There was no hope for me among decently men. Could I play tennis, baseball, football? No; not successfully. Assuredly I was a weakling of the worst kind. Nearly everybody could do those things, and nearly all youths were far more in all the niceties of life than was I: manners, dancing, knowledge of dress and occasions. Hence I was a fool. The dullest athlete of the least could overcome me; the most minute society man, if socially correct, was my superior. Hence what had I to hope for? And when it came to wealth and opportunity, how poor I seemed! No girl of real beauty and force would have anything to do with a man who was not a success; and so there I was, a complete failure to begin with.
 
The aches and pains that went with all this, the amazing depression, all but suicidal. How often have I looked into comfortable homes and wished that some family would give me shelter! And yet half knowing that had it been offered I would have refused it. How often have I looked through the windows of some successful business firm and wished I had achieved ownership or , a position similar to that of any of the officers and managers inside! To be president or -president or secretary of something, some great thrashing business of some kind. Great God, how it seemed! And yet if I had only known how centrally controlling the tool of could be made! It mattered not then that I was doing fairly well, that most of my employers had been friendly and as to my welfare, that the few girls I had approached had responded freely enough—still I was a failure.
 
I rapidly became familiar with the city news department of the Globe-Democrat. Its needs, aside from great emergencies, were simple enough: interviews, the doings of conventions of various kinds ( grocers, wholesale hardware men, wholesale druggists), the plans of city politicians when those could be discovered, the news of the courts, jails, city hospitals, police courts, the deaths of well-known people, the goings-on in society, special functions of one kind and another, fires, robberies, defalcations. For the first few weeks nothing of importance happened. I was given the task evenings of looking in at the North Seventh Street police sta............