nd then been greeted with a surly "What do you want?" you
can't help having a grouch. There wasn't a man who treated my offer as
a business proposition.

At the end of that time two questions were burned into my brain: "What
can you do?" and "How old are you?" The latter question came as a
revelation. It seems that from a business point of view I was
considered an old man. My good strong body counted for nothing; my
willingness to undertake any task counted for nothing. I was too old.
No one wanted to bother with a beginner over eighteen or twenty. The
market demanded youth--youth with the years ahead that I had already
sold. Wherever I stumbled by chance upon a vacant position I found
waiting there half a dozen stalwart youngsters. They looked as I had
looked when I joined the United Woollen Company. I offered to do the
same work at the same wages as the youngsters, but the managers didn't
want me. They didn't want a man around with wrinkles in his face.
Moreover, they were looking to the future. They didn't intend to
adjust a man into their machinery only to have him die in a dozen
years. I wasn't a good risk. Moreover, I wouldn't be so easily
trained, and with a wider experience might prove more bothersome. At
thirty-eight I was too old to make a beginning. The verdict was
unanimous. And yet I had a physique like an ox and there wasn't a gray
hair in my head. I came out of the last of those offices with my fists
clenched.

In the meanwhile I had used up my advance salary and was, for the
first time in my life, running into debt. Having always paid my bills
weekly I had no credit whatever. Even at the end of the third week I
knew that the grocery man and butcher were beginning to fidget. The
neighbors had by this time learned of my plight and were gossiping.
And yet in the midst of all this I had some of the finest hours with
my wife I had ever known.

She sent me away every morning with fresh hope and greeted me at night
with a cheerfulness that was like wine. And she did this without any
show of false optimism. She was not blind to the seriousness of our
present position, but she exhibited a confidence in me that did not
admit of doubt or fear. There was something almost awesomely beautiful
about standing by her side and facing the approaching storm. She used
to place her small hands upon my back and exclaim:

"Why, Billy, there's work for shoulders like those."

It made me feel like a giant.

So another mon