"Everything in Searchlight is on a boom," said he. "Wages are good, and it's the very place for a young man to make money."
I was not making anything and had already grown tired of the little, sleepy town of San Pedro.
The fever of travel was once more infused within me.
I would go to Searchlight, and if I found it like the man had said, I promised myself I would settle down there and stop traveling about.
To hold my position as clerk in the hotel I had been compelled to invest all of my small salary in clothing.
When I resigned the job I had saved just $2.00.
Mr. Jennings said I was doing a bad thing starting to Searchlight broke, and that he would give me a letter of reference to a Los Angeles street car Superintendent. I reproduce his letter in this book, though I never used it, for I was bent now upon going to Searchlight, and that afternoon took the car for Los Angeles.
I knocked about the streets of Los Angeles three or four days trying to get up courage to begin beating trains again.
During my six weeks of ease and contentment at the hotel I had grown almost as timid as when I first left home.
Hardly before I knew it I was stranded in Los Angeles without a penny.