But the pressure from lack of money, plus a conviction that the university was not giving me all that I wanted in the time I could spare for it, forced me to leave.

I was not very disappointed.

For two years I had studied, and in those two years, what was far more valuable, I had done a prodigious amount of reading.
Then, too, my grammar had improved.

It is true, I had not yet learned that I must say "It is I"; but I no longer was guilty of a double negative in writing, though still prone to that error in excited speech.
I decided immediately to embark on my career.

I had four preferences: first, music; second, poetry; third, the writing of philosophic, economic, and political essays; and, fourth, and last, and least, fiction writing.