I lit the light in my room.  All night I read and re-read, not a whit sleepy or tired.

I went for a week in a mad dream, my face shining and glowing with inner ecstasy and happiness.

* * * * *

There did not seem to be time enough in the twenty-four hours of each day for reading and studying and writing.  And a new thing came to me:  a shame for my shadow thinness and a desire to build myself into a better physical man.

At that time McFadden’s Physical Culture Magazine was becoming widely read.  I came across a copy of it.  I found in it a guide to what I was in search for.  Faithfully I took up physical culture.  Fanatically I kept all the windows open, wore as little clothing as possible ... adopted a certain walk on tiptoe, like a person walking on egg-shells, to develop the calves of my legs from their thinness to a more proportionate shape.  And, as I walked, I filled and emptied my lungs like a bellows.  I kept a small statue of Apollo Belvedere on top of my bookcase.  I had a print of the Flying Mercury on the wall, at the foot of my bed.  Each morning, on waking, I filled my mind full of these perfect specimens of manhood, considering that by so doing I would gradually pilot my body to physical perfection....  I know that many things I say about myself will appeal to the “wit” as humorous.  I can’t help it if I am laughed at ... everybody would be, if they told the truth about themselves, like this.

* * * * *

I joined the Y.M.C.A. for the physical side, not for the spiritual.  I found a spirit that I did not like there, a sort of mental deadness and ineffectually.  But one thing the Y.M.C.A. did for me:  I found on the bulletin board one day an announcement of the summer term of Mt.  Hebron Preparatory School....  It was a school for poor boys and men ... neither age nor even previous preparation counted ... only earnestness of purpose.  And, as each student had his two hours’ work a day to do, the expense for each term was nominal.

I had been paid fifty dollars for my article on my adventures in the New York Sunday paper.  A Newark Sunday paper bought several articles also.  To the money I had saved up my father contributed as much again.  I started for preparatory school.

* * * * *

Mt.  Hebron School consisted of a series of buildings set apart on a hill.  It was an evangelical school founded by a well-known revivalist—­William Moreton.

Around it lay pine forests and, at its feet, the valley of the Connecticut River.

No matter what subjects they taught, the main endeavour of its professors, in season and out, was the conversion of every freshman immediately to Evangelical Christianity, as soon as he had had his quarters assigned to him....

Scarcely had we settled ourselves, each with his roommate, than the two weeks’ revival began.  I will not enter into the details of this revival.  This was merely the opening of the summer term.  At the opening of the school year in the fall—­that was when they held the real revival,—­and the story of the whipped-up frenzy of that will afford a more characteristic flavour.