a job of gardening at a dollar a day, as that
was a good bargain, and that did not prevent the young man eagerly
accepting the offer. That week he earned his board. The next week he was
adrift again, quite well used up from heavy work, but very active. His
hope was the one striking point in his character.
HIS CHEERY VOICE
could always be heard. People liked to have him around, but they never
seemed to pay him anything in return. Early in June he got a job
sandpapering window-frames in a city cellar. This tried his mettle for
it broke his hands to pieces, but he worked through the job at eight
dollars a week. It ruined about twenty-five dollars' worth of clothes
unavoidably. Coming out of the cellar the last day of the job, he looked
into a store which was just opening. Did they want clerks? Oh, yes.
"Lots" of them. How much did they pay? Five per cent. What were they to
sell? "Milton gold jewelry." All right.
"MILTON GOLD JEWELRY"
was made a sensation. It was all in the name. Had they called it brass
the people would have stood off. Make a chain that looks like gold,
call it Milton or Shakspeare or Byron gold, and the people want it--or,
at least they did, the year of the fire. The sales of our friend footed
up more than those of any of thirty clerks, and netted him about a
dollar and a quarter a day. But this charming industry could not last.
The people had bought a chain which they supposed to be worth sixty
dollars for a dollar and a half. In two weeks the chain would fade. It
was a necessity of the business to keep moving. Our friend could have
gone to some other city with the lover of Milton, if he had paid his own
fare, but he was heartily disgusted with the business, the scheme being
essentially American. He next was taken to Morris, Ill., by some kind of
a gang-worker. The English system of working from farm to farm with a
large force was to be tried. There he was treated a good deal worse than
hogs should be used. Finding his way back to Chicago, he again began
HIS TRAMP FOR WORK.
He called on an advertiser who wanted him to travel at a figure so low
that the question arose as to how he would pay his board, when the
advertiser told him he supposed his applicant understood that he "would
have to beat the hotels!" In September came the news of the death of his
sister and mother. And still he tramped. He was now in what his casual
acquaintances considered "a hard hole." His landlady was "carrying
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