pictures would
be gone and he would have nothing. He ought to get something to do and
save his pictures. But what?

To a man in Eugene's position--he was now thirty-one years of age, with
no training outside what he had acquired in developing his artistic
judgment and ability--this proposition of finding something else which
he could do was very difficult. His mental sickness was, of course, the
first great bar. It made him appear nervous and discouraged and so more
or less objectionable to anyone who was looking for vigorous healthy
manhood in the shape of an employee. In the next place, his look and
manner had become decidedly that of the artist--refined, retiring,
subtle. He also had an air at times of finicky standoffishness,
particularly in the presence of those who appeared to him commonplace or
who by their look or manner appeared to be attempting to set themselves
over him. In the last place, he could think of nothing that he really
wanted to do--the idea that his art ability would come back to him or
that it ought to serve him in this crisis, haunting him all the time.
Once he had thought he might like to be an art director; he was
convinced that he would be a good one. And another time he had thought
he would like to write, but that was long ago. He had never written
anything since the Chicago newspaper specials, and several efforts at
concentrating his mind for this quickly proved to him that writing was
not for him now. It was hard for him to formulate an intelligent
consecutive-idea'd letter to Angela. He harked back to his old Chicago
days and remembering that he had been a collector and a driver of a
laundry wagon, he decided that he might do something of that sort.
Getting a position as a street-car conductor or a drygoods clerk
appealed to him as possibilities. The necessity of doing something
within regular hours and in a routine way appealed to him as having
curative properties. How should he get such a thing?

If it had not been for the bedeviled state of his mind this would not
have been such a difficult matter, for he was physically active enough
to hold any ordinary position. He might have appealed frankly and simply
to M. Charles or Isaac Wertheim and through influence obtained something
which would have tided him over, but he was too sensitive to begin with
and his present weakness made him all the more fearful and retiring. He
had but one desire when he thought of doing anything outside his
c