Lost Lenore: The Adventures of a Rolling Stone

by Mayne Reid

I went up to them, offered my goods as before, and each took a newspaper. As one of them offered me payment for his copy, I had hardly the strength to hand him the paper and take his money. I nearly dropped to the pavement. The man was Captain Brannon, of the ship “Hope,” to whom I had been apprenticed!

I moved away from him as fast as my trembling limbs would carry me; and the glance which I could not help throwing over my shoulder, told me that I had not been recognised.

This was the man, who had promised to treat me as he would his own son; and yet during a long voyage had taken so little notice of me, that I could thus transact business with him, without being recognised!

By twelve o’clock my work for the day was finished; and I returned to the lodging-house with a dollar in picayune pieces—having made a hundred per cent on my capital.

I was at that hour the happiest boy in New Orleans.

I was happy, yet full of impatience, as I waited through the long afternoon for the return of Stormy Jack.

There was pride and pleasure in the anticipation of his approval of my exertions, when I should show him the money I had made. It was the first money I had ever earned—my only transactions with the circulating medium before that time, having been to spend it, as fast as it could be obtained from a fond father.

I entered into an elaborate calculation by an arithmetical rule I had learned under the name of “reduction,” and found that I had made in one day, by my own exertions, over two shillings of English money.

I had pride—pride in my ability to make money at all, and pride in my scholastic acquirements, which enabled one so young to tell how much had been gained, for I was not able to comprehend fully the amount, until I had brought it into shillings and pence.

With burning impatience I waited for the return of Stormy. Being fatigued, however, I fell asleep, and dreamt of having made a fortune, and of having had a fight with Mr Leary, in which that gentleman—to make use of Stormy’s favourite expression—had been “taught some manners.”