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For a year he wrestled with different manual labors, and stole when their perspiring monotones weakened and angered his desire to write lyrics that were half trite and half thinly wistful, but he finally decided to return to the midwestern city and brave the reactions of his parents, whose wrathful letters had sometimes visited his journeys. He determined to rest awhile amid the moderate comforts of his former home and felt that he could disarm the anger of his parents with a masterful, jesting attitude that would muzzle them. And so, penniless and in dirty clothes, he was now walking through the heavily tawdry business district of a midwestern city.

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On the streets martyred by crowds, electric lights pencilled the night with their trivial appeals, and an ineffectual approach to daylight spread its desperately dotted jest over the scene. Since Carl almost never voiced his actual thoughts and emotions to people, he grasped, as usual, the luxury of speaking to himself.