I was dragged up at the workhouse school till I was twelve. Then I ran away and sold papers in the streets, and anything else that I could pick up a few coppers by—except steal. I never did that. I always made up my mind I'd be a big man some day, and—I'm glad I didn't steal.

East, still doing the cicerone, pointed out all the remarkable characters to Tom as they passed […]

Bette Mandl, who had the original idea for this very special issue on O'Neill and Gender, contacted a particularly fine array of experts in that burgeoning field of study, and pretty much created the entire issue with her usual diligence and grace, leaving numb-handed but happy-hearted me with little to do but sit back and marvel at the splendor of the whole package.

But this fly-on-the-wall study of teenage outsiderdom gradually takes on darker overtones.