During the first few days he kept the fact diligently before his mind that he was in a land where there was "work and bread for all." In fact, for convenience' sake he fitted it to a little tune and hummed it to himself; but as time wore on the fact itself began to take on a doubtful look, and next the tune got fatigued and presently ran down and stopped.
His first effort was to get an upper clerkship in one of the departments, where his Oxford education could come into play and do him service.
But he stood no chance whatever.There, competency was no recommendation; political backing, without competency, was worth six of it.He was glaringly English, and that was necessarily against him in the political centre of a nation where both parties prayed for the Irish cause on the house-top and blasphemed it in the cellar.By his dress he was a cowboy; that won him respect--when his back was not turned--but it couldn't get a clerkship for him.But he had said, in a rash moment, that he would wear those clothes till the owner or the owner's friends caught sight of them and asked for that money, and his conscience would not let him retire from that engagement now.
At the end of a week things were beginning to wear rather a startling look.He had hunted everywhere for work, descending gradually the scale of quality, until apparently he had sued for all the various kinds df work a man without a special calling might hope to be able to do, except ditching and the other coarse manual sorts-and had got neither work nor the promise of it.
He was mechanically turning over the leaves of his diary, meanwhile, and now his eye fell upon the first record made after he was burnt out:
"I myself did not doubt my stamina before, nobody could doubt it now, if they could see how I am housed, and realise that I feel absolutely no disgust with these quarters, but am as serenely content with them as any dog would be in a similar kennel.Terms, twenty-five dollars a week.
I said I would start at the bottom.I have kept my word."A shudder went quaking through him, and he exclaimed:
"What have I been thinking of! This the bottom! Mooning along a whole week, and these terrific expenses climbing and climbing all the time!
I must end this folly straightway."
He settled up at once and went forth to find less sumptuous lodgings.He had to wander far and seek with diligence, but he succeeded.They made him pay in advance--four dollars and a half; this secured both bed and food for a week.The good-natured, hardworked landlady took him up three flights of narrow, uncarpeted stairs and delivered him into his room.
There were two double-bedsteads in it, and one single one.He would be allowed to sleep alone in one of the double beds until some new boarder should come, but he wouldn't be charged extra.
So he would presently be required to sleep with some stranger!
The thought of it made him sick.Mrs.Marsh, the landlady, was very friendly and hoped he would like her house-they all liked it, she said.
"And they're a very nice set of boys.They carry on a good deal, but that's their fun.You see, this room opens right into this back one, and sometimes they're all in one and sometimes in the other; and hot nights they all sleep on the roof when it don't rain.They get out there the minute it's hot enough.The season's so early that they've already had a night or two up there.If you'd like to go up and pick out a place, you can.You'll find chalk in the side of the chimney where there's a brick wanting.You just take the chalk and--but of course you've done it before.""Oh, no, I haven't."
"Why, of course you haven't-what am I thinking of? Plenty of room on the Plains without chalking, I'll be bound.Well, you just chalk out a place the size of a blanket anywhere on the tin that ain't already marked off, you know, and that's your property.You and your bed-mate take turn-about carrying up the blanket and pillows and fetching them down again;or one carries them up and the other fetches them down, you fix it the way you like, you know.You'll like the boys, they're everlasting sociable--except the printer.He's the one that sleeps in that single bed-the strangest creature; why, I don't believe you could get that man to sleep with another man, not if the house was afire.Mind you, I'm not just talking, I know.The boys tried him, to see.They took his bed out one night, and so when he got home about three in the morning--he was on a morning paper then, but he's on an evening one now--there wasn't any place for him but with the iron-moulder; and if you'll believe me, he just set up the rest of the night--he did, honest.They say he's cracked, but it ain't so, he's English--they're awful particular.
You won't mind my saying that.You--you're English?""Yes."
"I thought so.I could tell it by the way you mispronounce the words that's got a's in them, you know; such as saying loff when you mean laff --but you'll get over that.He's a right down good fellow, and a little sociable with the photographer's boy and the caulker and the blacksmith that work in the navy yard, but not so much with the others.The fact is, though it's private, and the others don't know it, he's a kind of an aristocrat, his father being a doctor, and you know what style that is--in England, I mean, because in this country a doctor ain't so very much, even if he's that.But over there of course it's different.So this chap had a falling out with his father, and was pretty high strung, and just cut for this country, and the first he knew he had to get to work or starve.Well, he'd been to college, you see, and so he judged he was all right--did you say anything?""No--I only sighed."