boy in the same office is now an editor. A fourth is a successful
life-insurance canvasser, and has lately insured the lives of the other
three. All four of these boys would rather have been in the stock, but
they couldn't afford to live on the low wages they would have had to
take. They were too ambitious to remain clerks, and so fitted themselves
for other employments. A fifth boy had not sufficient application or
ambition to follow their example, and a short time ago he was still a
book-keeper, and was making not over twenty dollars a week--not a rapid
advance in fourteen years. A sixth boy staid in the office until he was
earning ten dollars a week, lived on eight, and saved two. When he had a
hundred dollars he applied for a place in the stock. As he had been four
years with the firm, and was twenty-one years old, they gave him six
dollars a week to begin on. This, with the money he had saved, enabled
him to live as well as the year before. The following year he was raised
to eight dollars; in six months, to twelve; six months later, to
fifteen, and he is now head of his department and buyer for a large
importing house. He receives a salary of five thousand a year, and a
share in the profits of his department, which amounts to as much. He
makes two trips every year to Europe, and has all his expenses paid
while he is travelling for the house. Of those six boys, the parents of
only two lived in the city.

Thus far I have treated only of the chances in wholesale mercantile
establishments, such as deal in dry goods, hardware, and so forth.
These, however, form only a small portion of the business enterprises in
New York. There are banking houses, manufacturing concerns, publishing
houses, insurance companies, and hosts of agents for anything and
everything, not to mention the great number of retail stores, all of
which employ clerical assistance, and in any one of which the country
lad looking for work may suddenly find himself employed. It is a saying,
as true as it is old, that it is the unexpected that happens.

I know a boy who had lived all his life in the city, whose parents were
people of position and influence. He spent three weeks, working six
hours a day, in calling upon every business man he knew, or whom his
father knew, or to whom he could get letters of introduction, asking for
work, and finally found it through a young fellow of his own age whom he
had met casually during his previous summer vacation. S