ure.

A busy life I led, on Dover Street; a happy, busy life. When I was not
reciting lessons, nor writing midnight poetry, nor selling papers, nor
posing, nor studying sociology, nor pickling bugs, nor interviewing
statesmen, nor running away from home, I made long entries in nay
journal, or wrote forty-page letters to my friends. It was a happy
thing that poor Mrs. Hutch did not know what sums I spent for
stationery and postage stamps. She would have gone into consumption, I
do believe, from inexpressible indignation; and she would have been
in the right--to be indignant, not to go into consumption. I admit it;
she would have been justified--from her point of view. From my point
of view I was also in the right; of course I was. To make friends
among the great was an important part of my education, and was not to
be accomplished without a liberal expenditure of paper and postage
stamps. If Mrs. Hutch had not repulsed my offer of confidences, I
could have shown her long letters written to me by people whose mere
signature was prized by autograph hunters. It is true that I could not
turn those letters directly into rent-money,--or if I could, I would
not,--but indirectly my interesting letters did pay a week's rent now
and then. Through the influence of my friends my father sometimes
found work that he could not have got in any other way. These
practical results of my costly pursuit of friendships might have given
Mrs. Hutch confidence in my ultimate solvency, had she not remained
obstinately deaf to my plea for time, her heart being set on direct,
immediate, convertible cash payment.

That was very narrow-minded, even though I say it who should not. The
grocer on Harrison Avenue who supplied our table could have taught her
to take a more liberal view. We were all anxious to teach her, if she
only would have listened. Here was this poor grocer, conducting his
business on the same perilous credit system which had driven my father
out of Chelsea and Wheeler Street, supplying us with tea and sugar and
strong butter, milk freely splashed from rusty cans, potent yeast, and
bananas done to a turn,--with everything, in short, that keeps a poor
man's family hearty in spite of what they eat,--and all this for the
consideration of part payment, with the faintest prospect of a future
settlement in full. Mr. Rosenblum had an intimate knowledge of the
financial situation of every family that traded with him, from the
gossip of his