The others were more generous than the little cashier and inclined to make too much of my good fortune. For the first time in my life I had the pleasure of knowing that folks were looking up at me and envying me, and I liked the feeling of consequence. I let them think I was to get big wages.
"I suppose you'll be leaving this ranch before long?" Lou suggested.
"Oh, I shouldn't wonder if I might move over to the Palmer House."
A look of consternation spread over Ma Pierson's face at my joking words. She saw a quarter of her regular income wiped off the slate. After the others had gone I told her it was only a joke, and that I should stay with her "until I got married." She cried a little, and said things were bad with her and getting worse all the time. Lately Lou had taken to going with such kind of men that she had no peace at all. I tried to cheer her up, and it was a number of years after that before I could bring myself to leave her place, although the food got worse and worse, and the house more messy and slack.
Even when, later, I began to make a good deal of money, I did not care to change my way of life. At Ma Pierson's were the only people I knew well in the city, and though Grace, and Lou, and Ed, and Dick weren't the most brilliant folks in the city, they were honest, warm-hearted souls and good enough company. And the law clerk, Slocum, was much more. He meant a good deal to me. He taught me how to read—I mean how to take in ideas as they were thought out by those who put them in books. He lent me his own books, all marked and pencilled with notes and references, which showed me how a well-trained mind stows away its information, how it compares and weighs and judges—in short, how it thinks.
We had many a good talk, sitting on the dusty stone steps in our shirt sleeves late summer nights, when it was too hot to sleep. He had read a deal of history and politics and economics as well as his law, and when it came to argument, he could shut me up with a mouthful of facts that showed me how small my lookout on the world was. I remember how he put me through his old Mill, making me chew hard at every point until I had mastered the theory; then he fed me Darwin and Spencer, and Stubbs and Lecky, and a lot more hard nuts. And I think that I owe no one in the world quite so much as I do that keen, silent Yankee, who taught me how to read books and know what is in them.
Meantime I was not doing anything wonderful over at the Yards. For several months the big manager scarce looked my way when he came across me, while I drove and made deliveries to the city trade. Dround & Co.'s customers were mostly on the West Side, in the poorer wards along the river, where Jews and foreigners live. I used to wonder why the firm didn't try for a better trade; but later, when I learned something about the private agreements among the packers, I saw why each kept to his own field. I soon came to know our territory pretty well, and got acquainted with the little markets. My experience at the Enterprise gave me an idea that I thought to turn to some account with Dround's manager. One day, as I was driving into the Yards, I met the Irishman, and he threw me a greeting:—
"Hello, kid! What's the good word?" And he climbed affably into the seat beside me to drive up to the office.
Here was my chance, and I took it.
"Why don't Dround's handle sausage?" I said to the manager.