leus of the collection was a handful
worth at least three dollars, which I had kept as security for twenty
cents I loaned to a messenger-boy who was sent to reform school before he
could redeem them).

I'd trade anything and everything for anything else, and turn it over in
a dozen more trades until it was transmuted into something that was worth
something. I was famous as a trader. I was notorious as a miser. I
could even make a junkman weep when I had dealings with him. Other boys
called me in to sell for them their collections of bottles, rags, old
iron, grain, and gunny-sacks, and five-gallon oil-cans--aye, and gave me
a commission for doing it.

And this was the thrifty, close-fisted boy, accustomed to slave at a
machine for ten cents an hour, who sat on the stringer-piece and
considered the matter of beer at five cents a glass and gone in a moment
with nothing to show for it. I was now with men I admired. I was proud
to be with them. Had all my pinching and saving brought me the
equivalent of one of the many thrills which had been mine since I came
among the oyster pirates? Then what was worth while--money or thrills?
These men had no horror of squandering a nickel, or many nickels. They
were magnificently careless of money, calling up eight men to drink
whisky at ten cents a glass, as French Frank had done. Why, Nelson had
just spent sixty cents on beer for the two of us.

Which was it to be? I was aware that I was making a grave decision. I
was deciding between money and men, between niggardliness and romance.
Either I must throw overboard all my old values of money and look upon it
as something to be flung about wastefully, or I must throw overboard my
comradeship with these men whose peculiar quirks made them like strong
drink.

I retraced my steps up the wharf to the Last Chance, where Nelson still
stood outside. "Come on and have a beer," I invited. Again we stood at
the bar and drank and talked, but this time it was I who paid ten cents!
a whole hour of my labour at a machine for a drink of something I didn't
want and which tasted rotten. But it wasn't difficult. I had achieved a
concept. Money no longer counted. It was comradeship that counted.
"Have another?" I said. And we had another, and I paid for it. Nelson,
with the wisdom of the skilled drinker, said to the barkeeper, "Make mine
a small one, Johnny." Johnny nodded and gave him a glass that contained
only a third as much as the