"Who've you worked for?"
To mention here his four years of writing would be absurd. "No one," he stammered—"that is, I've had no business experience."
The superintendent's reply came out sharply: "No experience—no references—can't use you. Good morning."
David stumbled out, not noticing the relief his dejection gave the other applicants waiting outside the office. He saw the difficulty of his situation with a new, startling clearness; the superintendent had summed it up with business-like conciseness—"no experience, no references." A sudden fear, a sudden consternation, clutched him. Would he ever be able to pass that great wall standing between him and a position?—that wall builded of his prison record, of no experience, of no references?
Whether or not, he must try. He hurried to another office that had advertised for help, and to another, and to another—and so on for days. Usually he was turned away because there was really no work, but several times because to the penetrating questions he could return only his distrust-rousing answers. His courage tried to escape; but he caught it and held it, desperately.
Saturday evening an expressman delivered a box sent by his old New Jersey landlady. The charge was a dollar, and the dollar's payment was a tragedy. The box contained only a few of the things he had left behind him. His landlady, though kind, was careless, his things had become scattered during the four years, and the contents of the box were all she had been able to get together. There were a few of his books, a few photographs and prints, a few ornaments, a pair of boxing gloves, most of his manuscripts, and an overcoat. The overcoat at least was worth having, with cool weather but a few weeks off.
The second week was an elaboration of the first few days, and the first half of the third was the same. Then he had three days' work at addressing envelopes—girls' work and boys' work, for which he was paid eighty-five cents a day. Then the search again.
At length he found a place. It was in a small department store in One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street—a store that in fifteen years had developed from a notion shop occupying a mere hole in the wall. The proprietor was one of those men who do not see the master chances, the thousands and the millions, but who see a multitude of little chances, the pennies and the dollars. He squeezed his creditors, his customers, his shopgirls—kept open later than other stores to squeeze a few last drops of profit from the day. His success was the sum of thousands of petty advantages.
When David came to him he saw that here was a man in cruel need. The labour of a man in cruel need is yours at your own price—is, in fact, a bargain. He had had enough experience with bargains in merchandise to know that when a rarely good bargain offers it is best to snap it up and not question too closely into the reasons for its cheapness. So he offered David a place in the kitchen furnishing department. Salary, five dollars a week.
David accepted. His first week's salary, minus ten cents a day for car fare and ten cents for luncheon, amounted to three dollars and eighty cents. He had begun a second month in his room, and his landlady, seeing how poor he was, again demanded her rent in advance. After paying her, David had a dollar and a quarter left. But he had a job—a poor job, but still a job.