ver there was a
chance to do an honest stroke of work, I did it. I have walked fifteen
miles at night to carry an election return to the _Tribune's_ agent at
Gouverneur. I have turned out in the snow to break open the road when
the supervisor could not find another man in the township.

When Sartain started his magazine, I wrote an essay in competition for
his premiums, and the essay earned its hundred dollars. When the
managers of the "Orphan Home," in Baltimore, offered their prizes for
papers on bad boys, I wrote for one of them, and that helped me on four
hard months. There was no luck in those things. I needed the money, and
I put my hook into the pork-barrel,--that is, I trusted the Public. I
never had but one stroke of luck in my life. I wanted a new pair of
boots badly. I was going to walk to Albany, to work in the State library
on the history of the Six Nations, which had an interest for me. I did
not have a dollar. Just then there passed Congress the bill dividing the
surplus revenue. The State of New York received two or three millions,
and divided it among the counties. The county of St. Lawrence divided it
among the townships, and the township of Roscius divided it among the
voters. Two dollars and sixty cents of Uncle Sam's money came to me, and
with that money on my feet I walked to Albany. That I call luck! How
many fools had to assent in an absurdity before I could study the
history of the Six Nations!

But one instance told in detail is better than a thousand told in
general, for the illustration of a principle. So I will detain you no
longer from the history of what Fausta and I call

THE CRISIS.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CRISIS.

I was at work as a veneerer in a piano-forte factory at Attica, when
some tariff or other was passed or repealed; there came a great
financial explosion, and our boss, among the rest, failed. He owed us
all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and very blue. Jonathan
Whittemore--a real good fellow, who used to cover the hammers with
leather--came to me the day the shop was closed, and told me he was
going to take the chance to go to Europe. He was going to the Musical
Conservatory at Leipsic, if he could. He would work his passage out as a
stoker. He would wash himself for three or four days at Bremen, and then
get work, if he could, with Voightlander or Von Hammer till he could
enter the Conservatory. By way of preparation for this he wanted me to
sell him my Ad