all my pain and misery was plainly caused by just a lack or as thia had i these things all be well without them � well i was very miserable i was ready to accept if by that i could get what i wanted while not ready to admit that all people were as deserving as i by ai the sad state of the poor was a constant with me bat near always i was the greatest and poorest and most deserving of all thia view tended to the of my work a of imagination and force still any limited as i was at that time has a i � ig road to go even in that moat imaginative of all the literary the possessor of notions sa i then held is certainly from anything important he passes beyond them yet the or i have described appears to reign in too often it is a condition of many minds of the better sort and is retained in its worst form by experience it is knocked out of them or they are utterly in the process bat it cannot be got over with mine was a sad case one of the things which this point of view did for me was to give my writing at that time a and melancholy torn which not go in any newspaper of today i hope i me to paint the ideal as not only entirely probable before life be what it � the as yon see i so twist and the most commonplace scenes as to make one think that i was writing of paradise indeed i my imagination to away a about me at and only the good sense of tlie or the indifference of a practical minded public the paper from appearing on one occasion for instance i went to report a of quality that was at the and was with a love scene which was a part of it that i was entirely blinded to all the faults of construction the remainder of the play showed and wrote it np in the moat glowing colors and the copy reader was too weary that ni t or too to capture it the next day some of the other newspaper men in the office noticed it and commented on it to me or to saying it was high and that the play itself was which was but did that core met not a bit i was for a day or two by it bnt not for long seeing other rs of the same and with much sweet love in them i as before a little later a negro singer a yoimg woman of considerable ability who was being as the black was to appear in st the of the that was presenting her called my attention by letter to her ability and by means of and notices of her work published elsewhere had endeavored to impress me i read these notices in the glowing phrases of the press agent and went forth on this to cover this myself to make it all the i invited and with him proceeded to the where we were assigned a box as it turned out or as i chanced to see or feel it the woman was a sweet and impressive singer engaging and agreed with me that she sing we listened to the of a dozen pieces including such old as and the bye and then i being greatly moved returned to the office and wrote an account that was fairly m� � with the which i was there i did not attempt to her art � i not knowing nothing of even the of plunged at once into that wider realm which a book about the of nature itself what is so as the which the human voice is capable of i wrote in part especially when that is itself a of the things in nature here we hare a young black it is fresh from the woods and of her native country yet blessed by some strange chance with that thing a voice and all that we hold to he most lovely the of the waters the radiance of the moonlight the of sweet sunlight storm the voices and echoes of nature all are found here thrilling over lips which represent in their but a few of the which and skill would seem to require yes one may sit and in hearing miss sing entertain all these things because of them she is a compound youthful suggestive of the sweetness of nature itself to understand the significance of such a statement in st louis one have to look into the social and political conditions of the people who dwelt there to a certain extent they were southern in temperament representing the anti negro spirit which prevailed for so many years after the war again they were fairly illuminated where waa that a bit of such as this was sound it might get by but when it is remembered that thia was and written about a s ro a race more or less alien to their sympathy would it not naturally fall hard ears and appear somewhat ridiculous f a negro the compound of the elements in nature t and in their paper by chance it went through having come to lo upon most of my stuff as the of some ge who could do about as he pleased neither nor the editor in chief saw it perhaps or if they did they gave it no attention music the and the arts being of small import here but depend upon it the of the various rival papers that were being at by the globe saw it and knowing the of our editor in to of his own paper at once set to work to make some a book about thing oat of it and of all the in the middle west by reason of his 