as at present organised with saloons on all the corners. Louis
and I were two healthy youths. We didn't want to drink. We couldn't
afford to drink. And yet we were driven by the circumstance of cold and
rainy weather to seek refuge in a saloon, where we had to spend part of
our pitiful dole for drink. It will be urged by some critics that we
might have gone to the Y.M.C.A., to night school, and to the social
circles and homes of young people. The only reply is that we didn't.
That is the irrefragable fact. We didn't. And to-day, at this moment,
there are hundreds of thousands of boys like Louis and me doing just what
Louis and I did with John Barleycorn, warm and comfortable, beckoning and
welcoming, tucking their arms in his and beginning to teach them his
mellow ways.

CHAPTER XX

The jute mills failed of its agreement to increase my pay to a dollar and
a quarter a day, and I, a free-born American boy whose direct ancestors
had fought in all the wars from the old pre-Revolutionary Indian wars
down, exercised my sovereign right of free contract by quitting the job.

I was still resolved to settle down, and I looked about me. One thing
was clear. Unskilled labour didn't pay. I must learn a trade, and I
decided on electricity. The need for electricians was constantly
growing. But how to become an electrician? I hadn't the money to go to a
technical school or university; besides, I didn't think much of schools.
I was a practical man in a practical world. Also, I still believed in
the old myths which were the heritage of the American boy when I was a
boy.

A canal boy could become a President. Any boy who took employment with
any firm could, by thrift, energy, and sobriety, learn the business and
rise from position to position until he was taken in as a junior partner.
After that the senior partnership was only a matter of time. Very
often--so ran the myth--the boy, by reason of his steadiness and
application, married his employ's daughter. By this time I had been
encouraged to such faith in myself in the matter of girls that I was
quite certain I would marry my employer's daughter. There wasn't a doubt
of it. All the little boys in the myths did it as soon as they were old
enough.

So I bade farewell for ever to the adventure-path, and went out to the
power plant of one of our Oakland street railways. I saw the
superintendent himself, in a private office so fine that it almost
stunned me.