But the ice had been broken; the plunge had been made, and I was proud and happy over the result. I stuck to the card business for some months, finally getting so I could make from one to two dollars a day at it.
One day I chanced to fall into conversation with a lightning rod agent, who had taken a room in the house where I boarded. In a short time we struck up quite a friendship, and he proposed that I should travel with him. In consideration of my services, which would be only in helping him put up the rods, he agreed to pay all my expenses, teach me the business, and allow me to sell calling cards on the side.
I accepted, and here let me say that I never fully realized what a truly typical lightning rod agent was until I started out with this man. I had heard of them, and remembered that my father was trimmed up to the tune of a couple of hundred dollars by one, but I never understood the breadth of intellect, fertility of resource and depths of trickery displayed in the legitimate pursuit of this vocation until I had obtained an inside view of the game.
I traveled with Mr. Carlysle for a long while, working the country, and the towns as we passed through them. As this is to be largely a record of my own personal performances, I shall not give the details of this trip, except that I learned all that was going, which was a great deal. At the end of it we were on our way to Davenport, Iowa. I was getting tired of the business, and intended to quit when we reached that destination. I had twenty-three dollars in cash to show for my seven months’ work, and figured on fixing myself up a little and looking for a job. I could not travel and sell calling cards exclusively, since there was not enough in it to justify the expense, and I thought it high time for me to look around for some broader and more profitable field.
Just as we got within a mile of the city our horse shied at a runaway team and Mr. Carlysle was thrown out of the wagon, run over, and both legs broken. He was taken into the city; and hotel, doctor and medicine bills broke us both as flat as anything you ever saw.
I tried to get a job, but could not find a thing. I was known as the lightning rod agent’s friend, and no one would have me at any price. It seemed as though every one there had a dread, or horror, of a lightning rod man and all his belongings. Mr. Carlysle was taken to the charity hospital, while I was turned out of the hotel to hustle the best I could.
Just imagine! There I was, a perfect stranger, not knowing a soul, hundreds of miles from home, without a cent in my pocket, and unable to get a thing to do.
Should I become a tramp, begging at back doors for handouts of broken victuals; or would it be best to starve and be done with it? One way or the other, it looked as though these questions would soon have to be settled.
