"This can't go on," I told her.
I must make more than ten dollars a week. Again I sent out some of my sketches, again the magazines sent them back. I went to a newspaper office, but there an ironical office boy, with the aid of the city editor, made me feel that reporting was not in my line. What other work could I find to do? How much time did I have? How long was my father going to last? I watched his face and our bank account. I studied the "want ads" in the press. But the more I studied the smaller I felt, for this was one of the years of depression. "Two Hundred Thousand In New York Idle," I read in a headline. Here was literature that gripped!
"I guess I'll stay right where I am. It's safer," I thought anxiously. "Perhaps if I work hard enough they'll give me a raise at Christmas. When Dad was my age he kept two sets of books, one by day and the other at night. How can I make my evenings pay?"
I took long walks in Brooklyn and picked up night work here and there. It was monotonous clerical work, and being slow at figures I was often at it till midnight. Very late one evening, while making out bills in a hardware store, I suddenly came to a customer whose initials were J. K. It started me thinking of Joe Kramer and our last long talk—about hay.
"So this is hay," I told myself. "How long will it take me to get a hay mind, back here by this damned harbor?"
CHAPTER IV
Then Sue began to take me in hand. From the subdued and weary girl that I had found when I came home, in the last few weeks she had blossomed out. The color had come into her cheeks, a new animation into her voice, a resolute brightness into her eyes.
"This thing has got to stop, Billy," she said determinedly. "This house has been like a tomb for months, you and Dad are so gloomy and tired you're sights. He needs a change, and so do you. You're getting into a little rut and throwing away your chance to write. You need friends who are writers, you need a lot of fresh ideas to tone you up. There's plenty of money in writing. And I need a change myself. I can't stand this house any longer. After all, I've got my own life to live. I'm going to get a job before long. In the meantime I'm going to see my friends. And what's more, I'm going to have them here to the house—- just as often as they'll come! Let's brighten things up a little!"
I looked at her with interest. Here was another sister of mine—risen out of her sorrow and eager to live, and talking of running our lives as well, of curing us both by large, firm doses of "fresh ideas," while she herself looked around for a job that would help her to "live her own life."