nned corn, corn cake,
bread pudding.

A word about that bread pudding. Ruth tells me she puts in an extra
quart of milk and then bakes it all day when she bakes her beans,
stirring it every now and then. I never knew before how the trick was
done but it comes out a rich brown and tastes like plum pudding
without the raisins. She says that if you put in raisins it tastes
exactly like a plum pudding.

So at the end of the first week I found myself with eighty dollars
left over from the old home, one dollar saved in the new, all my bills
paid, and Ruth, Dick and myself all fit as a fiddle.

CHAPTER VIII

SUNDAY

That first dollar saved was the germ of a new idea.

It is a further confession of a middle-class mind that in coming down
here I had not looked forward beyond the immediate present. With the
horror of that last week still on me I had considered only the
opportunity I had for earning a livelihood. To be sure I had seen no
reason why an intelligent man should not in time be advanced to
foreman, and why he should not then be able to save enough to ward off
the poorhouse before old age came on. But now--with that first dollar
tucked away in the ginger jar--I felt within me the stirring of a new
ambition, an ambition born of this quick young country into which I
had plunged. Why, in time, should I not become the employer? Why
should I not take the initiative in some of these progressive
enterprises? Why should I not learn this business of contracting and
building and some day contract and build for myself? With that first
dollar saved I was already at heart a capitalist.

I said nothing of this to Ruth. For six months I let the idea grow. If
it did nothing else it added zest to my new work. I shoveled as though
I were digging for diamonds. It made me a young man again. It made me
a young American again. It brought me out of bed every morning with
visions; it sent me to sleep at night with dreams.

But I'm running ahead of my story.

I thought I had appreciated Sunday when it meant a release for one day
from the office of the United Woollen, but as with all the other
things I felt as though it had been but the shadow and that only now
had I found the substance. In the first place I had not been able
completely to shake the office in the last few years. I brought it
home with me and on Sundays it furnished half the subject of
conversation. Every little incident, every bit of conversation, every
exp