o
Evans and his bride."

When a woman is as brave as that it stirs up all the fighting blood in
a man. Looking into her steady blue eyes I felt that I had exaggerated
my misfortune. Thirty-eight is not old and I was able-bodied. I might
land something even better than that which I had lost. So instead of
a night of misery I actually felt almost glad.

I started in town on Monday in high hope. But when I got off the train
I began to wonder just where I was bound. What sort of a job was I
going to apply for? What was my profession, anyway? I sat down in the
station to think the problem over.

For twenty years now I had been a cog in the clerical machinery of the
United Woollen Company. I was known as a United Woollen man. But just
what else had this experience made of me? I was not a bookkeeper. I
knew no more about keeping a full set of books than my boy. I had
handled only strings of United Woollen figures; those meant nothing
outside that particular office. I was not a stenographer, or an
accountant, or a secretary. I had been called a clerk in the
directory. But what did that mean? What the devil was I, after twenty
years of hard work?

The question started the sweat to my forehead. But I pulled myself
together again. At least I was an able-bodied man. I was willing to
work, had a record of honesty and faithfulness, and was intelligent as
men go. I didn't care what I did, so long as it gave me a living
wage. Surely, then, there must be some place for me in this alert,
hustling city.

I bought a paper and turned to "Help Wanted." I felt encouraged at
sight of the long column. I read it through carefully. Half of the
positions demanded technical training; a fourth of them demanded
special experience; the rest asked for young men. I couldn't answer
the requirements of one of them. Again and again the question was
forced in upon me--what the devil was I?

I didn't know which way to turn. I had no relatives to help me--from
the days of my great-grandfather no Carleton had ever quit the game
more than even. My business associates were as badly off as I was and
so were my neighbors.

My relations with the latter were peculiar, now that I came to think
of it. In these last dozen years I had come to know the details of
their lives as intimately as my own. In a way we had been like one big
family. We knew each other as Frank, and Joe, and Bill, and Josh, and
were familiar with one another's physical ailments when any