I spent nearly all the night in the chapel, alone. The place was full of things. I felt there all the gods that ever were worshipped ... and all the great spirits of mankind. And I perceived fully how silly, weak, grotesque, and vain I was; and yet, how big and wonderful, it would be to swim counter, as I meant, to the huge, swollen, successful currents of the commercial, bourgeois practicality of present-day America.
I pinned up a sign on the bulletin board in the hall, in rhyme, announcing, that, that afternoon, at four o'clock, John Gregory would hold an auction of his books of poetry.
My room was crowded with amused students. I mounted the table, like an auctioneer, while they sat on my cot and on the floor, and crowded the door.
At first the boys jeered and pushed. But when I started selling my copy of Byron and telling about his life, they fell into a quiet, and listened. After I had made that talk, they clapped me. Byron went for a dollar, fetching the largest price. I sold my Shelley, my Blake, my Herrick, my Marvell, my Milton ... all....
My Keats I could not bring myself to sell. I kept that like a treasure. What I could not sell I gave away.
My entire capital was ten dollars ... one suit of clothes ... a change of underwear ... two shirts. I discarded my trunk and crammed what little I owned into my battered suitcase.
That night, the story of my dismissal from school having travelled about from mouth to mouth, and the tale of my poets' auction—the boys cheered me, as I came into the dining hall—cheered me partly affectionately, partly derisively.