hard thousand, that came a dollar or so at a time, and every dollar with
a little bright mark where I had bit it--I roomed with a dry-goods clerk
named Charlie Chase. Charlie had a hankering to be a rich man; but
somehow he could never see any connection between that hankering and his
counter, except that he'd hint to me sometimes about an heiress who used
to squander her father's money shamefully for the sake of having Charlie
wait on her. But when it came to getting rich outside the dry-goods
business and getting rich in a hurry, Charlie was the man.

Along about Tuesday night--he was paid on Saturday--he'd stay at home
and begin to scheme. He'd commence at eight o'clock and start a
magazine, maybe, and before midnight he'd be turning away subscribers
because his presses couldn't print a big enough edition. Or perhaps he
wouldn't feel literary that night, and so he'd invent a system for
speculating in wheat and go on pyramiding his purchases till he'd made
the best that Cheops did look like a five-cent plate of ice cream. All
he ever needed was a few hundred for a starter, and to get that he'd
decide to let me in on the ground floor. I want to say right here that
whenever any one offers to let you in on the ground floor it's a pretty
safe rule to take the elevator to the roof garden. I never exactly
refused to lend Charlie the capital he needed, but we generally
compromised on half a dollar next morning, when he was in a hurry to
make the store to keep from getting docked.

He dropped by the office last week, a little bent and seedy, but all in
a glow and trembling with excitement in the old way. Told me he was
President of the Klondike Exploring, Gold Prospecting and Immigration
Company, with a capital of ten millions. I guessed that he was the board
of directors and the capital stock and the exploring and the prospecting
and the immigrating, too--everything, in fact, except the business card
he'd sent in; for Charlie always had a gift for nosing out printers
who'd trust him. Said that for the sake of old times he'd let me have a
few thousand shares at fifty cents, though they would go to par in a
year. In the end we compromised on a loan of ten dollars, and Charlie
went away happy.

The swamps are full of razor-backs like Charlie, fellows who'd rather
make a million a night in their heads than five dollars a day in cash.
I have always found it cheaper to lend a man of that build a little money
than to hire him. A