"I was keeping open house for all comers, regardless of law or order, morality or money. I wished to hurl myself and my theories to the test, and gauntlet my defiance to a withered world. It was a happy time, looked back on now as a dream, in which, however, there was an undertone of nightmare. We had three little rooms up many mild flights of unbalustered stairs. Our main furniture consisted of mattresses which, like morning clouds, were rolled away when the sun arose.
"For the shocking salary of six dollars a week I was collector for the Prudential Insurance company. One rent day I lacked the necessary four dollars and a half. I telegraphed my other ego, my dear brother Jim, in Pittsburg. The same day brought from him a telegraph money-order for twenty-five dollars, and soon afterward a letter asking me to go to Pittsburg and help him out. I had always been deemed an expert in the leather line, especially in locating anything wrong in the various processes. My brother was a member of a new millionaire leather firm, which was losing thousands of dollars every week because they were unable to locate the weakness in the process. Jim wanted me to find the flaw.
"It was with the utmost repugnance that I quit my happy slum life, but I loved Jim, and it was the call of the ancient clan in my blood. When I arrived in Pittsburg, without a trunk, and with other marks of the proletarian on me, Mr. Kirkman, the millionaire tanner, showered me with every luxury—every luxury except that of thought and true emotion. Never before did I realise so intensely my indifference to what money can buy. My private office in the shop was stocked with wines and imported cigarettes: but I was not so well off as in my happy slum.
"I toiled like a sleepless sisyphus, and one day, in a flash of intuition, I located and showed the flaw in an obscure process; I was completely successful.
"I had put no price on my services. For Jim's sake, I had worked like a Trojan, physically and mentally, for a month. With unlimited money at my disposal, I had drawn only twenty dollars altogether, and this I sent to Marie, to keep the wolf away from the Rogues' Gallery, our flat.
"When the factory was running smoothly, I told Mr. Kirkman that I would break in a man for my place. He made me a tempting offer to take full charge of the shop. I told him I would not be a participant in exploiting his 'hands,' who were getting only $7 to $8 a week. Furthermore, I said I would not stand for the discharge of any man for incompetency. I had never in the shop met any man I could not teach and learn something from in return; I had never discharged a man, and never would. The millionaire boss nevertheless continued to urge me to take the position, and my brother Jim offered me two thousand dollars' worth of stock at par and a large yearly salary. Well, I suppose, there's no use of anybody's trying to move me when Jim has failed.
"I quit Pittsburg with nothing but the price of a ticket to Chicago, though my brother told me the firm would send me a check for $500 or $1,000 for my services as an expert. When, with a beating heart, I returned to my dear Rogues' Gallery, all was change and dispersion. No more happy times in our little balcony of fellowship, which had overlooked in its irresponsibility the jarring sects and insects of this world: the most delightful place in this world to me is a home without a boss, and this home was for the time gone. The possibility of being unfair to Marie makes me draw a veil over the cause of the breaking-up of the Rogues' Gallery.
"Poor Jim found that the firm would not pay me a cent for my really brilliant month's work, for the reason that I had refused to be a conventional boss and had no written or verbal contract or agreement. Jim therefore resigned, forfeiting fifty dollars of weekly salary and twenty-five thousand dollars in stock, ten thousand of which he had offered me to stay. Mr. Kirkman thought all the world of Jim and could not run the shop without him. Nor could he recover from the blow, for he loved my brother, as everybody did. Mr. Kirkman died a few weeks afterward, and after a year or two the firm went into the hands of a receiver. All this happened because of a few paltry dollars, which I did not ask for, for which I did not care a damn—and this is business! I heartily rejoice, if not in Mr. Kirkman's death, at least in the dispersion of his family and their being forced into our ranks, where there is some hope for them.
"My brother Jim was one of the maimed ones in my family. Twenty years ago, defective machinery and a surgeon's malpractice made one arm useless. The Pittsburg affair broke up his beautiful home. He and his whole-souled wife and charming children, into whose eyes it was an entrancing rapture for me to look, were a family without a boss; they needed none, for they loved one another perfectly. Jim is dead now, and the best I can do is to send you his last letter; it has the brevity of grief:
"'I have no explanation to offer for my silence, more than a feeling which possessed me shortly after my arrival here—a desire to be considered a dead one, and am doing all but the one thing that will make my wish a reality. I am long tired of the game, and only continue to play because of the hardships my taking off would cause those who at present are not able to care for themselves. A way out of it would be to take them along, but I think if the matter were put before them, they would decline my proffered service; and take a chance as half-orphans. You calling up our boyhood days in "Little Hell" makes me question still further if I have any right to deny those dear to me the delights that only the young can feel and enjoy. I made a great mistake in coming to this Ohio town. The chase for dollars which I am performing here seven days every week is very disgusting to me, and every day only adds to the pangs. I am out all day selling goods, pleading for trade and collecting for former weeks' business; and in the evening I must do the necessary office work. Every day is the same, except Sunday, when I make up the book-keeping for the whole week and prepare statements and the like, to begin the usual round on Monday morning. It is a hell of a life and I wish it were done. I have some consolation in being able to call up at will those that I love. I have many a waking dream, while tramping the hills, about the comrades that have added to the joys of my former existence. Let me hear from you occasionally, because a letter from you seems to revive some of the old feeling that formerly made life passable.'