salary as a clerk brought me into no unfavourable comparison with the
clock; and I doubt if I could make you understand my sometimes feeling
when I passed Tiffany's window that I should like to smash the clock."

"I met Ethel frequently in society, dancing with her, and sitting next
her at dinners. And by the time I had dined at her own house, and walked
several afternoons with her, my lot as a six-hundred-dollar clerk began
to seem very sad to me. I wrote verses about it, and about other subjects
also. From an evening passed with Ethel, I would go next morning to the
office and look at the other clerks. One of them was fifty-five, and he
still received six hundred dollars--his wages for the last thirty years. I
was then twenty-one; and though I never despaired to the extent of
believing that years would fail to increase my value to the firm by a
single cent, still, for what could I hope? If my salary were there and
then to be doubled, what kind of support was twelve hundred dollars to
offer Ethel, with her dresses, and her dinners, and her father's
carriage? For two years I was wretchedly unhappy beneath the many hours
of gaiety that came to me, as to every young man."

"Those two years we could have been in Michigan," said Ethel, "had you
understood."

"I know. But understanding, I believe that I should do the same again. At
the office, when not busy, I wrote more poetry, and began also to write
prose, which I found at the outset less easy. When my first writings were
accepted (they were four sets of verses upon the Summer Resort) I felt
that I could soon address Ethel; for I had made ten dollars outside my
salary. Had she not been in Europe that July, I believe that I should
have spoken to her at once. But I sent her the paper; and I have the
letter that she wrote in reply."