The first night I slept in the same building with the store, but above it. About one o'clock in the morning the bell rang. Some one wanted the doctor at once. I said I wasn't a doctor, and that the doctor was not there. The messenger ran off. This was bad enough, to be routed up in the middle of the night that way. The next day the druggist went away from the store on some business. I sampled everything edible in the place. I tried the different kinds of candy, and sirups, and then went out and bought some lemonade and a dozen raw oysters. The result may be imagined. After a few minutes of Mont Pelée, I decided that I had had enough of the drug business. I told the druggist my decision, shut the door, and left the store, a disappointed and lonely little fellow.
I hesitated as to my next step. But there was the old farmhouse—and it invited me very tenderly just then to return. I was not conquered yet, but would fight on. I turned, as if by instinct, toward Cambridgeport, the scene of my traffickings with the grocer. My uncle Clarke lived there, the uncle that had brought me on from New Orleans; but I could not make up my mind to go to him, either. The family would laugh at me. No! I would get another place—but it would not be in a drug-store!
Then I had an inspiration. There was the grocer named Holmes! Why not try him? I would. So I went to the store of Joseph A. Holmes, at the corner of Main Street and Brighton Road. To my eager inquiry, Mr. Holmes said: "You have come just in time. We want a boy." Then he asked me what wages I wanted. "Just enough to live on," I said. "You can live with us," he said; "and I will give you one dollar a week." That meant $50 a year. It was a great sum to me. I began to work at once.
This was the winter of '43-'44, and I was fourteen. My work was to drive the grocery wagon up to Old Cambridgeport, take orders, and fill them. I had to get up at four o'clock in the morning to look after the horse, just as I had done on the farm, and to get everything ready for the trip. I had the orders of the day before to fill and to deliver at the college. Besides, I had to work in the store after I came back from Old Cambridgeport. In the evening I had to look after the lamps, sweep out, put up the shutters, and do numberless other little things about the store. The store was closed at ten o'clock at night. Then I would put out the lights, which were old-fashioned oil lamps.
It was a long day for a boy—or for a man. I worked eighteen hours every day. And the laborers in the Pennsylvania coal-mines are now striking for an eight-hour day! I had six hours of night in which to go to bed and to find what sleep I could. This life continued for about two years. In that time I had learned to do almost everything that was to be done about a grocery store. I had really learned this in the first six months.
One of my many little duties was to make paper bags. I had to cut the paper and paste it together. Another task was to take a hogshead of hams, put each ham in bagging, and sew it up. Then I had to whitewash each particular ham. That was a nice business! It went against my nature more than any other part of my manifold labors in the store.
Mr. Holmes was a Baptist deacon, but the only thing about him to which my youthful taste objected was that he chewed tobacco all the time. Yes, there was another objection. He insisted upon my joining the Bible class in his Sunday-school. This I would not do. I could not explain it all to him; but the Santa Claus matter had not yet worn out of my mind.
One day at the grocery store, Mr. Holmes brought in an elderly gentleman and said to me: "George, I want you to take this gentleman" (naming him) "up to the college, and walk about with him." The gentleman seemed to me to be about sixty years old. Mr. Holmes cautioned me about keeping him out of any danger, as he was not very well. "Don't talk to him," he said to me, "unless he wants to talk to you."
The thing was like a holiday to me. I walked with him up to the college, and all around, as much as he wanted to; and it never occurred to me, in all the days I was with him in this way, to find out who he was, or to think about it at all.
He was John Jacob Astor, Jr., eldest son of the founder of the great house of the Astors. He was practically an invalid. He was then in charge of a Mr. Dowse, who generally left him to the care of Mr. Holmes, and who, in turn, left him to me. After this, he came to New York, where he was taken in charge by his brother, William B. Astor.