My cruise in the boat lasted a week, and I returned ready to enter the university. During the week's cruise I did not drink again. To accomplish this I was compelled to avoid looking up old friends, for as ever the adventure-path was with John Barleycorn. I had wanted the drink that first day, and in the days that followed I did not want it. My tired brain had . I had no moral in the matter. I was not ashamed nor sorry because of that first day's orgy at Benicia, and I thought no more about it, returning gladly to my books and studies.  
Long years were to pass ere I looked back upon that day and realised its significance. At the time, and for a long time , I was to think of it only as a frolic. But still later, in the of brain-fag and intellectual weariness, I was to remember and know the for the that resides in alcohol.
 
In the meantime, after this one relapse at Benicia, I went on with my , primarily because I didn't want to drink. And next, I was because my way led among books and students where no drinking was. Had I been out on the adventure-path, I should as a matter of course have been drinking. For that is the pity of the adventure-path, which is one of John Barleycorn's favourite stamping grounds.
 
I completed the first half of my year, and in January of 1897 took up my courses for the second half. But the pressure from lack of money, plus a conviction that the university was not giving me all that I wanted in the time I could spare for it, forced me to leave. I was not very disappointed. For two years I had studied, and in those two years, what was far more valuable, I had done a amount of reading. Then, too, my grammar had improved. It is true, I had not yet learned that I must say "It is I"; but I no longer was guilty of a double negative in writing, though still to that error in excited speech.
 
I immediately to on my career. I had four preferences: first, music; second, poetry; third, the writing of , economic, and political essays; and, fourth, and last, and least, fiction writing. I cut out music as impossible, settled down in my bedroom, and tackled my second, third, and fourth choices . Heavens, how I wrote! Never was there a creative fever such as mine from which the patient escaped fatal results. The way I worked was enough to my brain and send me to a mad-house. I wrote, I wrote everything—ponderous essays, scientific and sociological short stories, humorous verse, verse of all sorts from triolets and to blank verse tragedy and elephantine in Spenserian . On occasion I composed , day after day, for fifteen hours a day. At times I forgot to eat, or refused to tear myself away from my outpouring in order to eat.
 
And then there was the matter of typewriting. My brother-in-law owned a machine which he used in the day-time. I............