I'll begin to-night by telling her about myself.
"I don't know where I was born, Lucy, or who my father was. My mother
was the mistress of an Italian called Luigi Giuseppi. She died a
rotten death, leaving me at six to Luigi. He treated me badly but he
needed me in his gambling business, and he kept me by telling me how
bad my mother was and threatening to tell other people. From the time
I was eight till I was fourteen, I don't suppose a day passed without
his telling me of the rot I had inherited from my mother. I began
gambling for him when I was about ten.
"When I was fourteen I was arrested in a gambling raid and paroled in
the care of John Seaton, a lawyer. He took me to the Grand Canyon. He
and Frank Allen, a guide, suggested to me the idea that Luigi's
mistress was not my mother. Such an idea never had occurred to me
before. They first gave it to me in the bottom of the Canyon.
"I can't put into writing what that suggestion, coupled with my first
view of the Canyon meant to me. But it was as if I had met God face to
face and He had taken pity on a dirty little street mucker and He had
lifted me in His great hands and had told me to try to be good and He
would help me. I never had believed in God before.
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