worked--No. 9 Exchange Place, Jersey City--and found the door locked. I
waited around for a while, for I thought my employer wanted his clothes
or he would not have sent me for them. Finally I got tired of waiting,
and after trying the door once more and finding it still locked, I said
to myself, "I'll just put these clothes in the furniture store next door
and I'll get them to-morrow morning." I left them and told the man I
would call for them in the morning, and started for home.

I was in bed dreaming of Indians and other things, when mother wakened
me, shouting, "Where's the man's clothes?" I couldn't make out at first
what all the racket was about. Then I heard men's voices talking in the
yard, and recognized Mr. M., my Sunday-school teacher, and my employer,
the man that was going to make a great engineer out of me. I went out on
the porch and told him what I had done with the clothes, and he nearly
collapsed. He was very angry, and drove off, saying, "You come to the
office and get what's due you in the morning." I went the next morning,
got my money, and bade him good-by. That was the last of my becoming one
of the great engineers of the day.

I was glad, and I went back to school determined to study real hard, and
I did remain in school for a year. Then the old craze for work came on
me again. Father had died in the meantime, and mother was left to do the
best she could, and I got a job with the determination to be a help to
her.


AT WORK AGAIN

I got a position as office boy at 40 Broadway, then one of New York's
largest buildings. The man I worked for was a commission merchant, a