ROWN,

_TO_ JOHN PECK, _Dr_.

_To Rent of Room to date_ $9 00

_Rec'd Pay't_,

I came to the emphatic conclusion that I was 'hard up.'

I kept bachelor's hall in Franklin Street, in apartments not altogether
sumptuous, yet sufficiently so for my purposes,--to wit, to sit in and
to sleep in; and inasmuch as I took my meals amid the gilded splendors
of the big saloon on the corner of Broadway, I was not disposed to
reproach myself with squalor. Yet the articles of furniture in my room
were so far removed, separately or in the aggregate, from anything like
the superfluous, that when I calmly deliberated what to part with, there
was nothing which struck me as a luxury or a comfort as distinct from a
necessary of life. I took a second mental inventory: two common chairs,
a table, a mirror, a rocking-chair, a bed, a lounge, and a single
picture on the wall.

I declare, thought I, here's nothing to spare.

But things were getting to a crisis. I must 'make a raise,' somehow.
Borrow? Ah, certainly--where was the benevolent moneyed individual? My
credit had gone with my cash; both were sunk in the washing-machines.

I lighted my pipe, and surveyed my household goods once more.

There was the picture: couldn't I do without that?

Possibly. But that picture I had had--let me see--fifteen, yes, sixteen
years. That picture was a third prize for excellence in declamation,
presented me at the school exhibition in ---- Street, when I was twelve
years old. That was in 1843, and here, on the first of December, 1859, I
sat deliberately meditating its sale for paltry bread and butter!

No, no; I'd go hungry a little longer, before I'd part with that old
relic--remembrancer of the proudest day of my life. What a pity I hadn't
permitted that day to give a direction to my life, instead of turning my
attention to the paltry expedients for money-making followed by the
common herd! I might have been an accomplished orator by this time,
capable of drawing crowds and pocketing a thousand a month, or so. But
my tastes had run in other channels since the day when I took that
prize.

Still, when I thought of it deliberately, I made bold to believe there
was that yet in me which could meet the expectant eyes of audiences nor
quail before them.

A thought struck me! Was not here an 'opening' for an enterprising young
man? Was not the lecture-season at hand? Did not lecturers get from ten
to two hundred dollars per night? Couldn