I was broke. I had not eaten for three days. I had walked the streets for three nights. Every fiber of my being, every precept of my home training protested against and would not permit my begging. I saw persons all about me spending money for trifles, or luxuries. I envied the ragged street urchin as he took a nickel in exchange for a newspaper and ran expectantly to the next pedestrian. But I was broke and utterly miserable. Have you ever been broke?

I was broke. I had not eaten for three days. I had walked the streets for three nights. Every fibre of my being, every precept of my home training protested against and would not permit my begging. I saw persons all about me spending money for trifles, or luxuries. I envied the ragged street urchin as he took a nickel in exchange for a newspaper and ran expectantly to the next pedestrian. But I was broke and utterly miserable. Have you ever been broke? Have you ever been hungry and miserable, not knowing when or where you were going to get your next meal, nor where you were going to spend...

"August First, Nineteen Hundred and Eleven " To you that probably conveys nothing; to me it is a never-to-be-forgotten day, the marking of an epoch in my life-a life up to that time brimful of tragic experience and vivid impressions. Since that time my life has been equally vivid, if not tragic, though in a different way. It was on that date, after spending ten years behind stultifying steel bars and stolid stone walls, ten years in stripes and in the midst of degradation, that I was parole from San Quentin prison.