"Experience."
"Experience? Do you claim that as capital?"
"Indeed I do, sir, and worth more than all your store. I have been several years getting ready to make money, while you have been making it before you got ready. I have had too many ups and downs in my early life not to be able to profit by at least some of them sooner or later; and I can't afford now to go to work for you on a salary, and give you the benefit of all these years' experience. Not much, sir, and I'll just keep 'hus'ling.' If I can't win, I can die in the cause."
"But the probabilities are, you will never get enough ahead to start a business of your own, and will always keep in the same old rut."
"But I am not the 'rutty' kind, Mr. S. Besides, I dislike to work for any one but Johnston."
"Well, let's see how much it will take to hire you for a year."
"Very well; you mark on a piece of paper how much you will give, and I'll mark how much I'll take."
He agreed, and assured me he was going to make me an extra good offer for a new-beginner. When we had both put down our figures we threw our papers on the desk. He had marked six hundred dollars a year and expenses, and I had put down thousand dollars and expenses.
I asked, with much astonishment, if he didn't mean thousands, and he, with equal astonishment, asked if I didn't mean hundreds.
On my assuring him that I meant just what I had put down, he asked on what basis I figured. I answered, on the basis of having cleared over six hundred dollars the first month, on a capital of fifty dollars' worth of goods and one million dollars' worth of experience.