's a stone-cold fact. There's lots of hard-luck stories that
you've got to hear anyhow. The fellow that can keep his to himself is
the fellow that's likely to get there."

"Get there?" the vicar murmured reflectively, and Selden chuckled again.

"Get where he started out to go to--the White House, if you like. The
fellows that have got there kept their hardluck stories quiet, I bet.
Guess most of 'em had plenty during election, if they were the kind to
lie awake sobbing on their pillows because their feelings were hurt."

He had never been sorry for himself, it was evident, though it must be
admitted that there were moments when the elderly English clergyman,
whose most serious encounters had been annoying interviews with
cottagers of disrespectful manner, rather shuddered as he heard his
simple recital of days when he had tramped street after street, carrying
his catalogue with him, and trying to tell his story of the Delkoff to
frantically busy men who were driven mad by the importunate sight of
him, to worried, ill-tempered ones who broke into fury when they heard
his voice, and to savage brutes who were only restrained by law from
kicking him into the street.

"You've got to take it, if you don't want to lose your job. Some of
them's as tired as you are. Sometimes, if you can give 'em a jolly and
make 'em laugh, they'll listen, and you may unload a machine. But it's
no merry jest just at first--particularly in bad weather. The first five
weeks I was with the Delkoff I never made a sale. Had to live on my ten
per, and that's pretty hard in New York. Three and a half for your
hall bedroom, and the rest for your hash and shoes. But I held on, and
gradually luck began to turn, and I began not to care so much when a man
gave it to me hot."

The vicar of Mount Dunstan had never heard of the "hall bedroom" as an
institution. A dozen unconscious sentences placed it before his mental
vision. He thought it horribly touching. A narrow room at the back of
a cheap lodging house, a bed, a strip of carpet, a washstand--this the
sole refuge of a male human creature, in the flood tide of youth, no
more than this to come back to nightly, footsore and resentful of soul,
after a day's tramp spent in forcing himself and his wares on people
who did not want him or them, and who found infinite variety in the
forcefulness of their method of saying so.

"What you know, when you go into a place, is that nobody wants to see
you, and no