CHAPTER II.
Busted—Soap Signs—Walking—The Two Actors—Free Theatres—Jumping Bills—The Other Fakir—Pen Scheme—Street Talk—The Friendly Haystack.
Every man who has ever rustled on the road has had his experiences with that peculiar disease known as shortness of cash. I believe I have been “busted” more times than any other man on earth; and I am sure that the disease never elsewhere struck me with half the stunning force then it did when adrift and alone in the streets of Davenport.
It was positively my first experience of the kind. At home it was nothing strange to have an empty pocket from one week’s end to another; but what of that? Board was free, and a roof-tree overhead, while the paternal pocket was ready to respond to any demands within reason. In Chicago my finances had been perilously near to low water mark, but that needed to cause no uneasiness. A walk of a day and I could be feasting on the fatted calf.
But to be stranded in Davenport was a different matter. I remember, in the midst of my troubles, there popped into my head an old couplet, learned in my days at the public school:
“Take heart, nor of the laws of fate complain; Though now it be cloudy, it will clear up again.”
With that in my mind I took on a moral brace and marched down the street, willing to meet fate half way, and looking for something to do that might show a profit, however small.
I found it.
Had I not been cut out by nature, and the special design of Providence for the vocation which I have so successfully followed, it is more than likely I would have sat down, with my head on my hands, and wept. I confess I felt like it for a moment. When I had resolutely thrust such weakness out of my mind, and taken a calmer view of the situation, I saw a glimmer of light ahead.
A miserably written placard in a store window furnished the inspiration.