_I here give further insight into my character for
the delectation of the reader, recounting in precise
and careful manner a short story concerning an
experience that I had while waiting for the arrival
of my twenty-fifth birthday._
I NEED not detail all the vicissitudes through which I passed before I
reached that day of all days, my twenty-fifth birthday. I may simply
say, that, owing to the fault above mentioned, I was thrown upon the
world with such force that I hit it good and hard, after my father’s
death, and that the world and I seemed to find nothing in which we were
in perfect harmony. I speak of the talking world; for with Nature I
never had the slightest trouble—she understood me and I understood her.
But nobody had any faith in my word, notwithstanding I never promised to
do a thing which was not done. That very trait of character saved me
from starvation on several occasions, one of which I may mention.
I was out in the country, among the mountains, and an eagle was carrying
away a little child. I was near at hand as the bird got its prey, and I
was then about ten years of age. I had been practicing with a sling and
was traveling alone the mountain road from house to house, having had
nothing to eat for several days. I had just gone into the barnyard of
this particular house, when the bird of prey swept down and I heard the
cry of the child and its mother.