I lived on chestnuts because I found men selling them on the street. I drank water from horse-fountains. After I walked all day and most of the night, and napped for a while, standing up against a building in a dark corner, I began to feel more or less like a horse; I had eaten so much dry fodder and had gulped so much water! There were many adventures, of course, but I have already stated why I may not deal with them.
Staggering from weariness, I fairly bumped, at last, into a door which was labeled: “Trident Wrecking Company, Anson C. Doughty, General Manager.” This was no accident. I reckon I had tramped all the waterfront and had read all the signs except that one.
I went into the outer office, holding my letter by one corner.
Nobody paid any attention to me for half an hour. There were men writing in big books behind a counter, and finally I pushed the letter over to one of them who had stopped to light a cigar. He pushed it back.
“Not here,” he said. “Doesn’t come here.”
“But where will I find him?”
“Don’t know. He’s a diver. They don’t do their diving here in the office.”
There was not a place in that office where I could sit and I was so tired I was sick. The man turned his back on me and I did not dare to ask him any more questions. I backed away from the counter and stood in the middle of the floor, swaying and blinking. I reckon I must have looked like a down-and-out bum. At any rate, when a big man came showing a caller out of a door labeled “General Manager, Private,” he bumped against me when I did not get out of the road and almost knocked me down.
I suppose it was due to my state of mind and body—but till that moment I had never felt what ugly, vicious hatred—desire to kill—meant. The feeling came up in me so suddenly that I was frightened.
The big man went right on with his friend and took no notice of me. He had hairy hands which he flourished as he talked, and the coat of his brown suit had long tails which ended in a sort of scallop at his knees, behind; it came to me in the flush of my boiling hatred that he looked like a fat cockroach. And that bump dealt to me when I was so miserable, that suggestion of the cockroach which always popped up at me as long as I knew him, later made for another decisive turning-point in my life. Again I am calling attention to the fact that matters which I did not reckon on as to amounting to much at the moment have been my mile-stones. As I look back I recognize the mile-stones, though I could not distinguish them at the time. For instance, if you keep on with me far enough, I shall tell you how an affair which counted, perhaps, as the biggest crisis in my life was dominated by a plain, ordinary monkey with an artificial tail.