understand what was passing in the clerk's mind when he dismissed me
with a wave of the hand. I thought, perhaps, that my dismissal meant
that he had engaged a man, but that was not the case. A man two or
three files behind me got the job.

My next attempt led me to a public school on Greenwich Avenue. The
janitor wanted an assistant. I was so weary with my inactivity, that
any kind of a job at any kind of pay would have been acceptable. The
janitor showed me over the school, told me what his work was. Finally,
he took me to the cellar where he had piled up in a corner about
twenty lots of ashes. That, of course, was the first thing to be done,
and though the pile looked rather discouraging, I stripped to the
work, and went at it. My task was to get the ashes outside ready for
carting away. I was about six hours on the job, when I accidently
overheard the janitor say to his wife: "Shut your mouth, I have just
got a sucker of a greenhorn to get them out." That was enough. I got
my coat and hat, went over to the janitor's door, but before I could
open my mouth, his wife said: "What's up?"

"Oh, the job's all right," I replied, "but what I object to is the way
you do your whispering!"

The lowest in the scale of all human employments is the art of
canvassing for a sewing machine company. I did it for two weeks. My
teacher taught me how to canvass a tenement. The janitor is the
traditional arch enemy of the canvasser. My teaching consisted largely
in how to avoid him, circumvent him, or exploit him. A Mrs. Smith--a
mythical Mrs. Smith--always lived on the top floor. I was taught to
interview her first; then I canvassed from the top down.