galleries. All of them requested answers in "own handwriting,
by mail only." I replied to scores of such with no success.

There was also another kind of illusive advertisement which I answered
in prodigal numbers in the greenness of these early days. These were
those deceitfully worded requests for "bright, intelligent ladies--no
canvassing." And not less prodigal were the returns I got. They came in
avalanches by every mail, from patent-medicine concerns,
subscription-book publishers, novelty manufacturers--all in search of
canvassers to peddle their trash.

I might have saved much superfluous effort, and saved myself many
postage-stamps, had I been fortunate enough to have had the advice of
Miss Plympton throughout this first week. But Miss Plympton had gone
away for several days. I had not seen her since we had parted on Sunday
night; but Monday evening, when I went to the table, I found a hasty
note saying she had gone out of town to see about a job, and would see
me later. That was all. I found myself longing for her more and more as
the week wore away.

Meanwhile, however, I did not allow the sentiment of an interrupted
acquaintance to interfere with my quest for a job, nor did I sit idle in
Miss Jamison's boarding-house waiting for replies. I had only a few
dollars in the world, and on the other side of those few dollars I saw
starvation staring me in the face unless I found work very soon. I
planned my search for work as systematically as I might have conducted a
house-cleaning. As soon as each day's grist of "wants" was sifted and a
certain quota disposed of by letter, I set out to make personal
applications to such as required it. This I found to be an even more
discouraging business than the epistolary process, as it was bitterly
cold and the streets were filled with slush and snow. The distances were
interminable, and each day found my little hoard dwindling away with
frightful rapidity into innumerable car-fares and frequent cups of
coffee at wayside lunch-counters. I traveled over miles and miles of
territory, by trolley-car, by elevated train and ferry-boat, to
Brooklyn, to Harlem, to Jersey City and Newark, only to reach my
destination cold and hungry, and to be interviewed by a seedy man with
a patent stove-lifter, a shirt-waist belt, a contrivance for holding up
a lady's train, or a new-fangled mop--anything, everything that a
persistent agent might sell to the spendthrift wife of an American
worki