f profit for the
advertisement it would give them and in view of future contracts with
the same firm which it might bring. The largest item in it was the
handling of the dirt. They showed me their blue prints and their rough
estimate and then Mr. Corkery said:

"How much can you take off that, Carleton?"

I told him I would need two or three hours to figure it out. He called
a clerk.

"Give Carleton a desk," he said.

Then he turned to me:

"Stay here until you've done it," he said.

It took me all the forenoon. I worked carefully because it seemed to
me that here was a big chance to prove myself. I worked at those
figures as though I had every dollar I ever hoped to have at stake. I
didn't trim it as close as I would have done for myself but as it was
I took off a fifth--the matter of five thousand dollars. When I came
back, Mr. Corkery looked over my figures.

"Sure you can do that?" he asked.

I could see he was surprised.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"I'd hate like hell to get stuck," he said.

"You won't get stuck," I answered.

"It isn't the loss I mind," he said, "but--well there is a firm or two
that is waiting to give me the laugh."

"They won't laugh," I said.

He looked at me a moment and then called in a clerk.

"Have those figures put in shape," he said, "and send in this bid."

Corkery secured the contract. I picked one hundred men. The morning we
began I held a sort of convention.

"Men," I said, "I've promised to do this in so many days. They say we
can't do it. If we don't, here's where they laugh at the gang."

We did it. I never heard from Corkery about it but when we were
through I thanked the gang and I found them more truly mine than they
had ever been before.

Every Saturday night I brought home my fifteen dollars, and Ruth took
out three for the rent, five for household expenses, and put seven in
the ginger jar. We had one hundred and thirty dollars in the bank
before the raise came, and after this it increased rapidly. There
wasn't a week we didn't put aside seven dollars, and sometimes eight.
The end of my first year as an emigrant found me with the following
items to my credit: Ruth, the boy and myself in better health than we
had ever been; Ruth's big mother-love finding outlet in the
neighborhood; the boy alert and ambitious; myself with the beginning
of a good technical education, to say nothing of the rudiments of a
new language, with a loyal gang of one hundred men and