"Begorra, mister, the hardest work for sure is no work at all, at all!"
In the middle of the afternoon, I began to get disturbed; then I decided to try a scheme I had worked over for hours. "Keep close to me, now, Tim," I said, as I led him to a drugstore at the corner of Grand Street and the Bowery.
"Sir," I said to the clerk, "you are unaccustomed to giving credit, I know; but perhaps you might suspend your rule for once and trust us to the amount of five cents?"
"You don't talk like a bum," he said, "but you look like one."
I thanked him for the compliment to my language, but insisted on my request.
"Well, what is it?" asked the clerk with somewhat of a sneer.
"I am hungry and thirsty. I have looked for work all day and have utterly failed to find it. Now I have a scheme and I know it will work. Oxalic acid eats away rust. If I had five cents' worth, I could earn a dollar—I know I could."
He looked curiously at me for a moment, and said with an oath:
"By—! I've been on the Bowery a good many years and haven't been sold once. If you're a skin-game man, I'll throw up my job!"
I got the acid. I played the same game in a tailor-shop for five cents' worth of rags. Then I went to a hardware store on the Square and got credit for about ten cents' worth of brickdust and paste. I took Tim by the arm and led him across the west side of Chatham Square. There used to be a big drygoods store on the east side of the Square, with large plate-glass windows, and underneath the windows, big brass signs.