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.

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