Adventures in Contentment

At another time he said, "If I am a tramp at all, I am a mental tramp. I have an unanchored mind." It seems that he came to a realisation that there was something peculiar about him at a very early age. He said they would look at him and whisper to one another and that his sayings were much repeated, often in his hearing. He knew that he was considered an extraordinary child: they baited him with questions that they might laugh at his quaint replies. He said that as early as he could remember he used to plan situations so that he might say things that were strange and even shocking in a child. His father was a small professor in a small college--a "worm" he called him bitterly--"one of those worms that bores in books and finally dries up and blows off." But his mother--he said she was an angel. I recall his exact expression about her eyes that "when she looked at one it made him better." He spoke of her with a softening of the voice, looking often at Harriet. He talked a good deal about his mother, trying to account for himself through her. She was not strong, he said, and very sensitive to the contact of either friends or enemies--evidently a nervous, high-strung woman. "You have known such people," he said, "everything hurt her." He said she "starved to death." She starved for affection and understanding. One of the first things he recalled of his boyhood was his passionate love for his mother.