ay the days, and this strong-limbed
young fellow became hungrier and hungrier, and more shiny at knees and
elbows, and more lapsided of foot-gear, and more thoroughly puzzled at,
and disgusted with, the city world.

Sometimes the young man would resolve that in the morning he would
abandon all his plans, and seek the country again, and there, where he
could hold his own and more, live and die apart from all the
feverishness and chances of another way of living. And he would awake
and sniff in the morning air, and say to himself that he was a cur last
night, and that he would stay and hold his own, and, in the end, win
somehow. The bulldog strain asserted itself, and he was his own again.
At night, after a fruitless day, he might become again depressed, but
the morning restrung the bow. Sometimes--these were his weaker
days--he would abandon all effort, and seek the free public library,
and there plunge into books and find, for the passing time,
forgetfulness. These were his only draughts of absolute nepenthe, for
at night he dreamed of the yesterday or of the morrow, and it marred
his rest. The library gave him, for the time, another world, though it
had harsh suggestions. He would stop his reading to wonder how
Chatterton felt when starving, or if Hood had as miserable a time of it
as alleged, or if Goldsmith was jolly when, penniless, he argued his
way through Europe, or if even Shakespeare went without a meal. But
the library, on the whole, was a solace and a tonic. It rested him,
since it made him, for a time, forget.

It was but characteristic of Harlson that, in the midst of all this
test of endurance of a certain sort, he should do what deprived him of
all chance of greater ease and greater vantage-ground with time
expended out of the line he had established. One of his old college
friends, guessing, perhaps, his real condition, came to him with an
offer of what was more than a fair income, if he would teach one of the
city's high-schools. The hungry fellow only laughed, and said that was
not on his programme. He still went hungry and grew more shabby in
appearance, and then came to him what was, perhaps, a sear upon his
life--perhaps what broadened, educated, and made him wiser.

CHAPTER XV.

THE STRANGE WORLD.

One night Harlson, with a great appetite, as usual,--for he had not
eaten since his scant breakfast,--went out to get his supper. It was
not dinner, for he never, at that time, di