An extraordinary chapter of autobiography, which describes the author's life between his twentieth and thirtieth years. When he went to Canada at the age of twenty he had never tasted alcohol or tobacco or been inside a theatre, and had only obtained books surreptitiously. He was, in fact, as 'green' as could be - and naturally he paid the consequences. After a brief stay in an office he invested his small capital in a dairy farm, which soon went out of business. Nothing daunted, Mr. Blackwood and his friend tried to run a public house, with disastrous consequences. They made a getaway to New York, and it was there that most of the adventures and the most extraordinary took place. The author's experiences as a crime reporter, his relationships with the 'confidence man' Boyd, and the eccentric old mendicant Alfred H. Louis, his brief but exciting career as a gold prospector are not easily forgotten. The book was originally published under the title Episodes Before Thirty, and Mr. Blackwood has considerably revised the text for the present edition.