, or to public dances, which were
very good places for getting acquainted. We didn't have the money. He
was a blacksmith's apprentice, and was earning but slightly more than I.
We both lived at home and paid our way. When we had done this, and
bought our cigarettes, and the inevitable clothes and shoes, there
remained to each of us, for personal spending, a sum that varied between
seventy cents and a dollar for the week. We whacked this up, shared it,
and sometimes loaned all of what was left of it when one of us needed it
for some more gorgeous girl-adventure, such as car-fare out to Blair's
Park and back--twenty cents, bang, just like that; and ice-cream for
two--thirty cents; or tamales in a tamale-parlour, which came cheaper and
which for two cost only twenty cents.

I did not mind this money meagreness. The disdain I had learned for
money from the oyster pirates had never left me. I didn't care
over-weeningly for it for personal gratification; and in my philosophy I
completed the circle, finding myself as equable with the lack of a
ten-cent piece as I was with the squandering of scores of dollars in
calling all men and hangers-on up to the bar to drink with me.

But how to get a girl? There was no girl's home to which Louis could take
me and where I might be introduced to girls. I knew none. And Louis'
several girls he wanted for himself; and anyway, in the very human nature
of boys' and girls' ways, he couldn't turn any of them over to me. He
did persuade them to bring girl-friends for me; but I found them weak
sisters, pale and ineffectual alongside the choice specimens he had.

"You'll have to do like I did," he said finally. "I got these by getting
them. You'll have to get one the same way."

And he initiated me. It must be remembered that Louis and I were hard
situated. We really had to struggle to pay our board and maintain a
decent appearance. We met each other in the evening, after the day's
work, on the street corner, or in a little candy store on a side street,
our sole frequenting-place. Here we bought our cigarettes, and,
occasionally, a nickel's worth of "red-hots." (Oh, yes; Louis and I
unblushingly ate candy--all we could get. Neither of us drank. Neither
of us ever went into a saloon.)

But the girl. In quite primitive fashion, as Louis advised me, I was to
select her and make myself acquainted with her. We strolled the streets
in the early evenings. The girls, like us, strol