"Now,
gentlemen, I am quite ready to fulfil my part of the agreement. If my
little story interests you, you are welcome to it. It was this way.
"I was a doctor by profession, carpenter by trade, stevedore by
occupation; then came harder times--booze--more booze--despair, illness,
and I found myself discharged from the hospital, down and out--a hobo!
Yet tramp life is not so bad after all. I like it. I like the open-air
existence, the freedom from care and responsibility, and--the hours. I
am much alone, and genius, you know, grows corpulent in solitude.
"My name is Tippett--Livingstone Tippett. Age, of no special moment. You
know," he said pleasantly, "there are two things all of us lie
about--our ages and our incomes. As this is a true story I will drop the
_age_ question. It is better so.
"My early life was uneventful. I was brought up by a pious mother in a
quiet, deeply religious home; every influence uplifting and
good-instilling. I was taught, among other things, to regard liquor in
any form with abhorrence, and that drunkenness was the sin of sins. I
was surrounded with every safeguard a loving mother could devise, and it
was not until after her death and my wife's that I took to drink. My
father and grandfather both died drunkards. Heredity, in my case,
overcame both training and environment, and my troubles hurried on the
inevitable.
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