But as usual, the yarns I retailed struck in upon my own imagination, too ... just as had my earlier stories of killing Indians.  Particularly the tale I had related of having seen dead Chinamen in heaps with their heads lopped off.  A nightmare of this imaginary episode began to come to me.  And another dream I had—­of a huge Boxer, with a cutlass, standing over me.  And he was about to carve me piecemeal while I lay bound and helpless before him.  The dream persisted so strongly that, after I awoke, I still seemed to see him standing in a corner of my room.  And I cried aloud.  And felt foolish when it brought my father in.  So I stopped making up adventures, especially the disagreeable ones, because they eventually had more effect on me than they did on my auditors.

* * * * *

My father had changed boarding places ... but, as usual, it was not better food, but a little, dark widow that attracted him to that boarding house.

* * * * *

I now devoted myself exclusively to poetry—­the reading of it.  I always had a book in my pocket.  I read even at meals, despite my father’s protests that it was bad-mannered.

* * * * *

Breasted’s book store, down in Newark, was where I was nearly always to be found, in the late afternoons.

It was there, in the murky light of a dying twilight, that I came Upon the book that has meant more to my life than any other book ever written....

For a long time I had known of John Keats, that there was such a poet.  But, in the fever of my adolescence, in the ferment of my tramp-life, I had not yet procured his poetry....

Now, here were his complete works, right at hand, in one volume ... a damaged but typographically intact copy....

I had, once before, dipped into his Endymion and had been discouraged ... but this time I began to read him with his very first lines—­his dedication to Leigh Hunt, beginning: 

“Glory and loveliness have passed away.”

Then I went on to a pastoral piece: 

“I stood tiptoe upon a little hill.”

I forgot where I was.  A new world of beauty was opened to me....  I read and read....

“Come, Gregory, it’s time to close”—­a voice at my elbow.  It was Breasted’s assistant, a little, curious man who reminded me of my sky-pilot at Sydney.  He, also, wore a black, long-tailed coat.  He was known as “the perfessor.”

“You’ve been standing here as quiet as a crane for three hours.”

“How much do you want for this book?”

“A quarter ... for you!” He always affected to make me special reductions, as an old customer....

A quarter was all I had.  I paid for my Keats, and walked home.  Walked?  I went with wings on each heel.  I was as genuinely converted to a new life as a sinner is converted to the Christian religion.