getting out a journal. Did our best day's work."


From time to time they got a little business, enough at any rate to
encourage Trump and George to continue with the office, though Daley
dropped out; and each day that the money was there the two partners
took out of the business twenty-five cents apiece, which they together
spent for food, Trump's wife being with her relatives and he taking his
dinner with the Georges. They lived chiefly on cornmeal and milk,
potatoes, bread and sturgeon, for meat they could not afford and
sturgeon was the cheapest fish they could find.[1] Mr. George
generally went to the office early without breakfast, saying that he
would get it down town; but knowing that he had no money, his wife more
than suspected that many a morning passed without his getting a
mouthful. Nor could he borrow money except occasionally, for the
drought that had made general business so bad had hurt all his friends,
and, indeed, many of them had already borrowed from him while he had
anything to lend; and he was too proud to complain now to them. Nor
did his wife complain, though what deepened their anxieties was that
they looked for the coming of a second child. Mrs. George would not
run up bills that she did not have money to meet. She parted with her
little pieces of jewellery and smaller trinkets one by one, until only
her wedding ring had not been pawned. And then she told the milkman
that she could no longer afford to take milk, but he offered to
continue to supply it for printed cards, which she accepted. Mr.
George's diary is blank just here, but at another time he said:[2]

"I came near starving to death, and at one time I was so close to it
that I think I should have done so but for the job of printing a few
cards which enabled us to buy a little cornmeal. In this darkest time