BELOW MOOSE HILLOCK
It was not long before the bare rooms of the Academy School—owing to the political situation, which necessitated the exercise of economies in every direction—began to suffer.
One night the students found the gas turned out and a small card tacked on the door of the outer hall. It read—
SCHOOL CLOSED FOR WANT OF
FUNDS. WILL PERHAPS BE
OPENED IN THE AUTUMN.
Signs of like character were not unusual in the history of the school. The wonder was, considering the vicissitudes through which the Academy had passed, that it was opened at all. From the institution's earlier beginnings in the old house on Bond Street, to its flight from the loft close to Grace Church and then to the abandoned building opposite the old hotel near Washington Square, where Amos Cobb always stayed when he came to New York, and so on down to its own home on Broadway, its history had been one long struggle for recognition and support.
This announcement, bitter enough as it was to Oliver, was followed by another even more startling, when he reached the office next day, and Mr. Slade called him into his private room.
"Mr. Horn," said his employer, motioning Oliver to a seat and drawing his chair close beside him so that he could lay his hand upon the young man's knee, "I am very sorry to tell you that after the first of June we shall be obliged to lay you off. It is not because we are dissatisfied with your services, for you have been a faithful clerk, and we all like you and wish you could stay, but the fact is if this repudiation goes on we will all be ruined. I am not going to discharge you; I'm only going to give you a holiday for a few months. Then, if the war-scare blows over we want you back again. I appreciate that this has come as suddenly upon you as it has upon us, and I hope you will not feel offended when, in addition to your salary, I hand you the firm's check for an extra amount. You must not look upon it as a gift, for you have earned every cent of it."
These two calamities were duly reported in a ten-page letter to his mother by our young hero, sitting alone, as he wrote, up in his sky-parlor, crooning over his dismal coke fire. "Was he, then, to begin over again the weary tramping of the streets?" he said to himself. "And the future! What did that hold in store for him? Would the time ever come when he could follow the bent of his tastes? He was getting on so well—even Miss Grant had said so—and it had not interfered with his work at the store, either. The check in his pocket proved that."