Episodes before thirty

by Algernon Blackwood

"Episodes before thirty" by Algernon Blackwood is a memoir written in the early 20th century. It traces the author’s formative years through hardship, wanderlust, and spiritual seeking, from failed ventures in Canada and moral conflict over running a Toronto saloon to poverty and fear in New York, set against an evangelical upbringing and a growing devotion to Nature and Eastern thought. The opening of the memoir recalls a stifling New York boarding-house where the young narrator endures vermin, hunger, and the menace of a petty forger roommate, cooks dried apples over gas jets, and sometimes sleeps on benches in Central Park. He then backtracks to his Canadian years: modest work at a Methodist magazine under kindly Dr. Withrow (who recoils when he admits he is a Buddhist), an ill-starred partnership in a Jersey dairy that collapses, and a second gamble—buying the disreputable Hub Hotel with his friend John Kay—despite a conscience formed by teetotal, evangelical parents. A flashy opening day at the saloon yields to decline, pilfering staff, and financial loss, even as he learns barroom tactics from Billy Bingham and wrestles with shame. Threaded through are vivid memories of evangelical childhood, Moravian schooling, early encounters with Patanjali, theosophy, and hypnotism, the guidance of a Hindu student, and, above all, nights alone in woods and by the lake whose rapture and calm teach detachment and help him endure.