But then, of course, there is no
way of measuring and comparing things of this kind. Anna was
the first virgin I had ever loved.
Was that responsible for the particular depth of my feeling? "Oh, I
must have her or I'll fall to pieces," I would say to myself,
yearning and groaning and whining like a lunatic
My gambling mania was really the aberration of a love-maddened
brain. How could Bender or Nodelman understand it? I found
myself in the midst of other lunatics, of men who had simply been
knocked out of balance by the suddenness of their gains. My
money had come slowly and through work and worry. Theirs had
dropped from the sky. So they could scarcely believe their senses
that it was not all a dream. They were hysterical with gleeful
amazement; they were in a delirium of ecstasy over themselves;
and at the same time they looked as though they were tempted to
feel their own faces and hands to make sure that they were real
One evening I saw a man whose family was still living on fifteen
dollars a week lose more than six hundred dollars in poker and
then take a group of congenial spirits out for a spree that cost him
a few hundred dollars more.
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