A city child's summer is spent in the street in front of his home,and all through the long summer vacations I sat on the edge of the street and watched enviously the other boys on the block play baseball. I was never asked to take part even when one team had a member missing--not out of special cruelty, but because they took it for granted that I would be no good at it. They were right,of course. I would never forget the wonderful evening when something changed. The baseball ended about eight or eight thirty when it grew dark. Then it was the custom of the boys to retire to a little stoop  that stuck out from the candy store on the corner and that somehow had become theirs. No grownup ever sat there or attempted to. There the boys would sit, mostly talking about the games played during the day and of the game to be played tomorrow. Then long silences would fall and the boys would wander off one by one. It was just after one of those long silences that my life as an outsider changed. I can no longer remember which boy it was that summer evening who broke the silence with a question;but whoever he was,I nod to him gratefully now. " What's in those books you're always reading?" he asked casually. "Stories," I answered. "What kind?"asked somebody else without much interest. Nor do I know what drove me to behave as I did,for usually I just sat there in silence,glad enough to be allowed to remain among them;but instead of answering his question,I told them for two hours the story I was reading at the moment. The book was Sister Carrie. They listened bugeyed and breathless. I must have told it well,but I think there was another and deeper reason that made them so keen an audience. Listening to a tale being told in the dark is one of the most ancient of man's entertainments,but I was offering them as well,without being aware of doing it,a new and exciting experience. The books they themselves read were the Rover Boys or Tom Swift or G.A. Henry. I had read them too,but at thirteen I had long since left them behind. Since I was much alone I had become an enthusiastic reader and I had gone through the booksforboys series. In those days there was no reading material between children's and grownups' books,or I could find none. I had gone right from Tom Swift and His Flying Machine to Theodore Dreiser and Sister Carrie. Dreiser had hit my young mind,and they listened to me tell the story with some of the wonder that I had had in reading it. The next night and many nights thereafter,a kind of unspoken ritual  took place. As it grew dark,I would take my place in the center of the stoop and begin the evening's tale. Some nights,in order to taste my victory more completely,I cheated. I would stop at the most exciting part of a story by Jack London or Bret Harte,and without warning tell them that was as far as I had gone in the book and it would have to be continued the following evening. It was not true,of course;but I had to make certain of my newlyfound power and position. I enjoyed the long summer evenings until school began in the fall. Other words of mine have been listened to by larger and more fashionable audiences,but for that tough and athletic one that sat close on the stoop outside the candy store,I have an unreasoning love that will last forever. The writer feels grateful even now to the boy who asked the question because the boy   _  .
invited him to join in their game liked the book that he was reading broke the long silence of that summer evening offered him an opportunity that changed his life