THIS BOOK TAINS THE RECORDS LEFT US by a man whom, acc to the expressioen used himself, we called the Steppenwolf. Whether this manuscript needs any introductory remarks may be open to question. I, however, feel the need of adding a few pages to those of the Steppenwolf in which I try to rey recolles of him. What I know of him is little enough. Indeed, of his past life and ins I know nothing at all. Yet the impressio by his personality has remained, in spite of all, a deep and sympathetie.
Some years ago the Steppenwolf, who was then approag fifty, called on my aunt to inquire for a furnished room. He took the atti oop floor and the bedroom it, returned a day or two later with two trunks and a big case of books and stayed nine or ten months with us. He lived by himself very quietly, and but for the fact that our bedrooms were door to each other—which occasioned a good many ters oairs and in the passage—we should have remained practically unacquainted. For he was not a sociable man. Indeed, he was unsociable to a degree I had never before experienced in anybody. He was, in fact, as he called himself, a real wolf of the Steppes, a strange, wild, shy—very shy—being from another world than mine. How deep the loneliness into which his life had drifted on at of his disposition ainy and how sciously he accepted this loneliness as his destiny, I certainly did not know until I read the records he left behind him. Yet, before that, from our occasional talks and enters, I became gradually acquainted with him, and I found that the portrait in his records was in substantial agreement with the paler and less plete ohat our personal acquaintance had given me.
By ce I was there at the very moment wheeppenwolf entered our house for the first time and became my aunts lodger. He came at noon. The table had not been cleared and I still had half an hour befoing back to the office. I have never fotten the odd and very flig impressions he made o this first enter. He came through the glazed door, having just rung the bell, and my aunt asked him in the dim light of the hall what he wahe Steppenwolf, however, first threw up his sharp, closely cropped head and sniffed around nervously before he either made any answer or announced his name.
"Oh, it smells good here," he said, and at that he smiled and my aunt smiled too. For my part, I found this matter of introdug himself ridiculous and was not favorably impressed.
"However," said he, "Ive e about the room you have to let."
I did not get a good look at him until we were all three on our to the top floor. Though not very big, he had the bearing of a big man. He wore a fashionable and fortable winter overcoat and he was well, though carelessly, dressed, -shaven, and his cropped head showed here and there a streak of grey. He carried himself in a way I did not at all like at first. There was something weary and undecided about it that did not go with his keen and striking profile nor with the tone of his voice. Later, I found out that his health oor and that walking tired him. With a peculiar smile—at that time equally unpleasant to me—he plated the stairs, the walls, and windows, and the tall old cupboards oaircase. All this seemed to please and at the same time to amuse him. Altogether he gave the impression of having e out of an alien world, from another ti perhaps. He found it all very charming and a little odd. I ot deny that he olite, even friendly. He agreed at ond without