July 27th.
I was getting down pretty close to the limit again, but I got something to do to-day. I had to take what I could find; it is what would be called a good position, I suppose; I am in a wholesale-paper store. I get twelve dollars, and that is quite something.
The business of the will is to face the things that come—not any other things. Now I have to drill and discipline myself anew, to learn to save my soul alive in a wholesale-paper store!
It is a great, dingy place, full of chaffering, hungry-looking men. They are all desperately serious; it is a great “business house,” I believe; the very atmosphere of it is deadly poison.
—Oh bald-headed, grim-visaged senior-partner, that didst gaze at me over black-rimmed spectacles—so I have “an opportunity to rise,” have I?
Yes,—I shall rise upon wings of a sapphire sheen, and toss myself up in the wind and shake down showers of golden light into thy wondering eyes, oh bald-headed, grim-visaged senior-partner!
—It is my business to show samples of paper. I shall learn all about them in a few days, and then I shall go at the Greek.