Chapter XX. My Steam Cooker
goes wrong. I go to Newport
for Enlistment on
a Training-ship
I RETURNED to the mill with the feelings of an escaped convict who has been returned to his cell after a day of freedom. My uncle found that he had been put on the black-list, and consequently would not be able to obtain work in any mill in the city. I was allowed to take up a new position as “doffer.” This meant an advance in wages, but I knew that I was not physically equal to it. There was nothing for me to do, however, but accept, for there was a waiting line at the lower end of the room and the overseer was not a man who offered things twice.
The mill was getting more and more beyond me. It had taken my strength and I was incapable of a man’s work, as a man’s work went in the mule-room. I resolved, then, to break my aunt’s domination, leave the mill, and earn my own way with the first thing that offered itself outside the mill.
About this time I read of a young fellow who earned large profits by selling steam cookers. I wrote to the firm, borrowed five dollars, and obtained a sample and a territory. This cooker consisted of five compartments which fitted in each other like a nest of boxes. The sample was on such a small scale that great care had to be exercised in a demonstration of it. I practised faithfully on it for a few evenings, tried to sell one to my aunt, and then resolved to take a day’s holiday and attempt a few sales. One cooker would yield a good day’s pay. I resolved to abide by instructions and persevere.
So I started out one afternoon, full of hope, assured that the cooker would sell on sight and that my way out of the mill had come. I did not then think that personal appearance had everything to do with successful salesmanship. I did not stop to think that a tall, bony, red-eyed youth, with a front tooth missing and wearing trousers which bagged at the knees, whose coat-sleeves were just high enough to show that he had never worn a pair of cuffs in his life—I did not stop to think that he would invite laughter and ridicule on his head. I faced the situation seriously and earnestly, and I expected the same consideration from the world.
I walked cheerfully to a wealthy portion of the town, in a district where I was certain they would like to see my wonderful steam cooker. In great, gulping patience I waited for an answer to my ring before a very aristocratic house. I arranged my “patter” and determined that everything should go on smoothly so far as my talent was concerned.
The lady of the house appeared and I stated my business. She did not invite me into her house. I exposed my wonderful machine, pulled it apart, explained how she could cook cabbages, puddings, and meats at one and the same time. I expatiated on the superiority of steam-cooked foods, and implied that she could not intelligently keep house and maintain a reputation as a cook unless she used the steam cooker. She bore my “patter” with great patience, and must have smiled at my cockney dialect, of which I was blissfully ignorant.
I had reached that part of the demonstration where the several sections had to be fitted into each other, and had put the first two sections in place and told what foods could be cooked in them, when I came to grief at the third section. It stuck, and in spite of the beads of perspiration which rolled down my face and a vain attempt to keep up the “patter,” I could not unfasten it until I had turned the wonderful cooker upside down, a proceeding which would have emptied the beans and puddings in practical use. The woman was very kindly, and she dismissed me with cordial words. But I went down those steps chagrined and fully persuaded that I must stay in the mill.
My uncle was now earning his living by keeping another store. He and my aunt were spending the profits in a next-door saloon. My home life had not improved.
Then I remembered the novels I had read; some of them, an “Army and Navy Series,” had told of apprentice life in the navy. I knew that Newport was the recruiting station, and I resolved to enlist.