"'If I keep my eyes open and am not too choosy I must find something to do,' I said to myself, and set out to look for it in earnest. It was Saturday morning, I remember, for I thought of the next day being Sunday, when I could not even hunt for work. I had walked a good way and asked for work at a lot of places without getting anything to do, when I saw an old negro man sweeping leaves off the sidewalk and washing off the front steps of a plain two-story house with a bucket of water and a cloth.
"'I may not be much account but I sure can do that,' I thought, and asked him how much he got for it.
"'For dese here, boss, I gits ten cents; but when I wuks all de way roun' to de back do' I gits some dinner th'owed in,' he said with a grin.
"That wasn't so bad; and 'boss'!—how good that sounded! I went on down the street feeling almost like a man again and not a down-and-out ex-convict.
"About a square away I began to ask at every house if they didn't want the leaves swept off and the front steps washed. Maybe I looked too much like a tramp or too much above one with that 'boss' still ringing in my ears—the first time I had been spoken to that way for more than ten years! Anyway I got turned down at first.
"At the tenth place, however, a two-story-and-attic red brick, they gave me a job. The woman asked me in a sharp voice, as if she were defending herself from being overcharged:
"'How much?'
"'Ten cents,' I answered, as meekly as I could.
"She seemed to think that was reasonable; and after waiting a minute, as if she wanted the work done and couldn't find any excuse for not letting me do it, she handed me a bucket and mop and broom and set me at it.
"I finished the job in about an hour; and I tell you I enjoyed that work! Beneath me? Why, it couldn't get beneath me—I was that low down in mind and living and even hope. I was just about all in, you understand; and I wasn't a plumb out-and-out fool.