I nearly perished, my first year. After you
settle somewhere, come and see me once in a while and let me hear how
you're getting on."
* * * * *
My first job was milking a cow and taking care of a horse, for board and
room.... The man for whom I worked was an old, retired farmer.
The disagreeable part of taking care of horses and cows is the smell. My
clothes, my room, even the skin of my body, soon reeked with the faint
yet penetrating odour of stable and barn.
But I was happy. Many great men had done as I was doing. Always trust me
to dramatise every situation!
I arranged my meagre row of text-books on the shelf in my attic. I set
Keats apart in a sacred nook by himself.
I sat humming softly to myself, studying my first lessons.
* * * * *
"Look," cried a girl, her voice vibrating with the hard sarcasm of
youth, "look, there goes Abe Lincoln," to another girl and two boys, who
lolled with her on the porch of the house next mine.
I was stabbed with a bitter pang of resentment. For my face was thin and
weather-beaten ... my sharp, bent knees never straightened as I walked
along, like a man going through snow drifts. Yet I held my head erect,
ridiculously erect ... and my chest was enormous through
over-development, as my arms and legs were thin.
* * * * *
My first few days at Laurel University brought me that beginning of
newspaper notoriety that has since followed me everywhere as a shadow
goes with a moving object.
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