Twenty years a fakir

by S. James Weldon

In my early school days if there was any one thing I excelled in it was penmanship, and with decent opportunity, and a propulsion in such direction, I might have made a fair draughtsman, or a very decent sign painter. Whether I would have made a fortune or not is another question.

At this moment of distress I remembered some “work” I had seen done in Chicago by a traveling “artist,” and that for the sake of amusement I had tried my hand at it for an hour. I went back to the hotel, and begged or borrowed a piece of soap. Then I worked store after store for sign work, promising to put up a magnificent one on each window, done in soap froth, for the inconsiderable sum of ten cents.

The thing was new to the most of them, and perhaps curiosity helped me. I was curious myself to know what I could do; and am not sure whether I was glad or sorry when the first merchant told me to fall to work.

But at it I went. A dozen strokes gave me confidence, and half a dozen jobs gave me skill. I made one dollar during the rest of the day, and two and a half the next. I lived on crackers and cheese the whole time, and cleaned the windows of a livery barn for permission to sleep in the office. The third day I had apparently exhausted the field, business fell off, and I determined to leave the town.

First, I went to the hospital, to take leave of Mr. Carlysle, and tried to force on him a share of my earnings. He refused, as at present he was well taken care of, and expected a small remittance in a few days, when he hoped to be sufficiently recovered to leave the city and attend to some business which would probably net him a little money. Bidding him good-bye, I slung my budget on my back and took to the ties, without any fair idea of where I was going or what I should do. I had a cash capital of three or four dollars in my pocket, and the art of making soap-foam signs at my fingers’ ends. I had also heard of a pressing want for laborers in a construction gang which was working on an intersecting railroad, and if the worst came to the worst I was able to handle a shovel or pick against the best of them. I was not brought up on a farm for nothing.

The sign business stayed with me fairly well. Even the smallest towns were willing to pay for an exhibition of my skill, and hard times soon developed a faculty for economical living. I cleared my expenses, at least, and some days did a trifle more. Of course, this was better than nothing, but was not satisfactory to my ambition. At such a rate fortune was a long way off, and it seemed to me the time was about ripe for something else, even though it should turn out to be no better.

When I once began to look about me it was not long before the something else turned up. I followed the railroad track, to make sure of good walking, and on the ties one morning I fell in with a couple of actors, whose finances were even at a lower ebb than mine. They were all-round variety people, and had their musical instruments with them, but there was not a cent of money in the whole outfit.

It did not take long for us to fraternize, especially as I carried a store of cold victuals which, at a pinch, might serve as a lunch for all of us. At noon we stopped at a spring in the shade of the woods, and, after making a moderate meal, put our heads together in a consultation as to the future.

The men were somewhat acquainted with this part of the country, and spoke of a small town a short distance ahead, where a hall could be obtained at a very moderate expense. We decided, if possible, to arrange for the use of this hall on sharing terms, and give a grand, free entertainment, to be interspersed with a collection.

We all “managed” the venture. By this time I had rubbed off quite a large percentage of the moss with which I was ornamented when first making my entrance into public life, and had wit enough to conceal a total ignorance of the show business and its possibilities. We arranged for the hall, on the percentage plan, and advertised ourselves by a little playing and singing on the street, an occasional blast from the horn that one of the party could really use in a rather creditable manner, and an announcement which I made at the top of my voice, and as near after the manner of a side-show “blower,” as I knew how: