

CHAPTER II 



LIVING BACKWARDS 



WHEN I made up my mind to back out 

 of my environment, I encountered some 

 poignant experiences which it is not worth 

 while to narrate in detail. It is enough if I can 

 make clear the resultant lesson of it all. Several 

 impulses and desires, deep embedded, combined 

 to make me step clean out of one habitat into an 

 other, and having taken the step, I had too much 

 obduracy of character to go back. You have 

 heard of men turning a new leaf. In my case it 

 was no mere ornamental figure of speech. If you 

 will permit me to use a better phrase, not irrev 

 erently, I was born again, and like all births it 

 had its pangs, but I emerged into a new world. 

 That is the interesting part of it. The Doctor 

 had declared that I could not lift myself by my 

 own waistband, and therefore must die. I ob 

 jected to dying. Somehow it hurt me to be 

 knocked down in that manner, and when I looked 



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