Harper's Round Table, October 22, 1895 Part 7

I knew a boy, an Englishman, a stranger in the country, who in less than a day's seeking got a place as entry-clerk at five dollars a week in a large notions house. He lived on it, I don't know how, and I fancy he would have difficulty in explaining, for six months, and then applied for an increase. The firm, which was noted for its close methods, refused; and the English lad, who was nearly desperate, simply resigned and walked into the place next door and applied for work. There was nothing for him there, nor next door, but before he had gone two blocks he found employment at seven dollars a week. The firm was doing a large business, which necessitated his staying until seven or eight o'clock two or three evenings a week. On such occasions he received fifty cents supper money. This boy shared a furnished room in Brooklyn with a friend, and took his meals at cheap restaurants. His extra fifty cents was, therefore, clear gain. The boys who boarded did not fare so well.

One of them, however, was able to find a boarding-house near enough for him to go to it for all his meals, and so secured the same benefit, and, in addition, all the advantages that come with having a settled home and regular habits. This boy, too, had secured a place with no more influence than that of the roommate his slender finances compelled him to take when he came to the city looking for work. Both of these boys were unusually bright. Though they had to work hard, they found time to study at night. The English boy studied mechanical drawing, and is now a successful designer in an architectural iron-works. The other boy studied medicine, and is now a resident physician in a large hospital. A third boy in the same office is now an editor. A fourth is a successful life-insurance canva.s.ser, and has lately insured the lives of the other three. All four of these boys would rather have been in the stock, but they couldn't afford to live on the low wages they would have had to take. They were too ambitious to remain clerks, and so fitted themselves for other employments. A fifth boy had not sufficient application or ambition to follow their example, and a short time ago he was still a book-keeper, and was making not over twenty dollars a week--not a rapid advance in fourteen years. A sixth boy staid in the office until he was earning ten dollars a week, lived on eight, and saved two. When he had a hundred dollars he applied for a place in the stock. As he had been four years with the firm, and was twenty-one years old, they gave him six dollars a week to begin on. This, with the money he had saved, enabled him to live as well as the year before. The following year he was raised to eight dollars; in six months, to twelve; six months later, to fifteen, and he is now head of his department and buyer for a large importing house. He receives a salary of five thousand a year, and a share in the profits of his department, which amounts to as much. He makes two trips every year to Europe, and has all his expenses paid while he is travelling for the house. Of those six boys, the parents of only two lived in the city.

Thus far I have treated only of the chances in wholesale mercantile establishments, such as deal in dry goods, hardware, and so forth.

These, however, form only a small portion of the business enterprises in New York. There are banking houses, manufacturing concerns, publis.h.i.+ng houses, insurance companies, and hosts of agents for anything and everything, not to mention the great number of retail stores, all of which employ clerical a.s.sistance, and in any one of which the country lad looking for work may suddenly find himself employed. It is a saying, as true as it is old, that it is the unexpected that happens.

I know a boy who had lived all his life in the city, whose parents were people of position and influence. He spent three weeks, working six hours a day, in calling upon every business man he knew, or whom his father knew, or to whom he could get letters of introduction, asking for work, and finally found it through a young fellow of his own age whom he had met casually during his previous summer vacation. So it may be with the country boy. The opening, when it does come, may be in the very opposite direction from that in which he is looking. If he is wise he will slip into it, however different it may be from what he wants. He will at least be earning money, and can keep up his search for what he does want until he finds it. If he is faithful and energetic he will gain the approval of his employers, and be able to take a city reference with him when he leaves for the "something better."

He may even find that there are unsuspected opportunities in the place that seemed so unpromising to him when he took it. A great deal depends upon the boy. Some boys will rise more quickly in one place than in another. The boy who is bound to rise will get to the top no matter where he finds himself. Few boys would take a position behind the counter in a retail store if they could get anything better, yet some clerks rise to be floor-walkers, and some floor-walkers rise to be buyers, and some buyers become partners and proprietors and ama.s.s great wealth.

I know one young man who had a good position in a wholesale hardware house, who gave it up to take a place at lower wages in a retail store.

He argued that as the retail hardware business was not one which usually attracted energetic and ambitious young men he would meet with little compet.i.tion from his fellow clerks. He was right. They knew only one side of hardware, the retail side. He knew hardware inside and out. He soon found that he knew more than the proprietor, and showed him how he could buy to better advantage. Then he said he thought he would go back to his old place, but his employer offered him an interest in the business, and he staid.

I know another boy who had some experience in retail clothing in an interior town. He came to New York, answered an advertis.e.m.e.nt, and obtained work in a large retail clothing house here. Then he studied clothes. When he had learned all about clothes, he studied cloths. He made friends with young men of his own age who were employed in importing houses and commission houses, and learned the difference between English cloths and French cloths and American cloths. Whenever he could he would go into other clothing stores, price their goods, perhaps try on a suit, and observe their methods. One day a fellow-salesman came to him, and said: "I have just come into a legacy of twenty thousand dollars, and I am going into business on my own account. But all I know is how to sell ready-made clothes. I know very little about cloth, and nothing about manufacturing or buying clothes.

If you will come with me and attend to that end of the business, I will give you a two-fifths interest." That firm now imports its foreign cloths direct, and its American goods are manufactured to its order.

Such are the stories of a few boys whom I know. They show how some boys came to the city to seek employment and found it, and may serve to show the way to others.

THE HORSE OF THE SHEIK OF THE MOUNTAIN OF SINGING SANDS.

With the money which they secured from the spoils of the Arab tribe, Ducardanoy, the ventriloquist, and Bouchardy, the prestidigitateur, purchased a fine vineyard at Nouvelle Saar-Louis. The story of the manner in which they had acquired their money pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth among the European population, and at length the Arabs of the town heard it, and repeated it to their brethren of the desert. At times the ex-chiropodists saw strange Arabs loitering in the road before their premises and regarding the house with careful scrutiny, but the garrison was not far away and no acts of violence were committed. It was nearly a year, however, before they ceased to have apprehensions of poniard thrusts in the back or of awaking to find their house in flames.

"It is plain," said Ducardanoy, as they were celebrating the anniversary of their arrival at Nouvelle Saar-Louis by a dinner to their friends, "that those fellows regard us as magicians of great power, else they would have sought revenge before this."

"I don't know about that," said Bouchardy. "Everybody here is well acquainted with our story, and I'll wager that the frightened tribesmen themselves now know that there was nothing supernatural in the entertainment to which we treated them. It is the proximity of the garrison that has prevented them from taking a revenge."

"I would like another encounter with the fellows in trade or in battle,"

said Ducardanoy. "There would be money in it, there would be money in it." And as if in answer to his wish, there was ushered in an Arab mulatto of the giant stature that characterizes the cross of the Arab and negro. He was a messenger from the Sheik of the Mountain of Singing Sands, he said, and had come to request the professional services of the two gentlemen in the case of the Sheik's horse Sunlight, who was grievously afflicted with a corn on his right forefoot. The chiropodists opened their eyes. Everybody in Algeria had heard of the stallion Sunlight, an animal whom money could not buy, and who was said to wear shoes of gold set with precious stones.

"A corn on a horse's hoof is not the same thing as a corn on a man's foot," said Ducardanoy.

"But we can cure it, nevertheless," said Bouchardy.

"Do not interfere, Bouchardy. You know nothing of surgery of the feet,"

said Ducardanoy, scornfully. "I shall require more pay for curing a corn on a horse's hoof than I would in the case of a man."

"The Sheik will fill your mouth with gold," said the messenger.

The Sheik's camp was pitched in the open desert, and the men of science vainly looked about in every direction for the far-famed hill against whose western face lay an immense heap of sand that hummed and sung whenever its surface was disturbed and sent sliding downward. The Sheik was himself troubled with a bad foot, due to his imprudently wearing a pair of razor-toed patent-leather shoes presented to him by the General commanding the department, and Ducardanoy was asked to relieve him before examining the golden-shod horse.

"Where is the Mountain of Singing Sands?" asked Ducardanoy, as he finished tying the last bandage on the Sheik's foot.

"We do not always camp in one place, you know," said the Sheik; "but you will see it shortly."

"How so?" asked Ducardanoy, in surprise. "It is not visible on the horizon, and must be a day's journey. How shall I see it shortly?"

"You will see it as the Evil One flies through the air with your soul on the way to the abode of the lost. Mustapha, bring out Sunlight and his consort, and make ready to drag these infidels asunder."

The chiropodists turned pale as this command was given, and the horses were brought forth, one a dapple gray with gold shoes, the other a dapple gray with silver shoes, and they had not yet uttered a word when the Sheik's retainers advanced to bind them.

"Stop!" cried Ducardanoy. "Why are we to be killed? What is our crime?"

"Do you not remember the time when by your devilish arts you frightened some true believers at the Roman tower and took their property? The Sheik of that tribe was my nephew, and even if he were no kin of mine, you infidel dogs should die for robbing true believers."

"When death is a punishment," said Bouchardy, "it is where the man desires to live and cannot, for if he desires to die, death can be no punishment. Now when you subject us to the slow torture of being pulled apart by these horses, we hail death with delight as a relief to pain, and your punishment has failed."

The Sheik scowled and said nothing.

"Where death comes quickly and without pain," continued Bouchardy, "the desire to live is intense, and death is all that the utmost hate can ask for as a revenge."

"Why do you point out these things to us?" asked the Sheik's vizier. "If what you say is true, why do you point out to us a way to make your punishment more terrible?"

"To show you how much wiser we Frenchmen are than you Arabs. To make you see how hopeless is the design you witless Arabs cherish of driving the wise French from the land. If my sorrow can accomplish anything for the republic, I willingly endure it."

"Let them be shot, and at once," growled the Sheik.

"I crave a boon," said Bouchardy. "We have cured your painful foot, and we have the right to ask a boon."

"If it be nothing that interferes with your death before the edge of the sun touches the horizon it shall be granted."

"It is that we be shot with my revolver, and I be allowed to load it."

The revolver was loaded, and the Sheik himself stepped forth and aimed it at Bouchardy.

Bang!

"Ha! ha!" laughed Bouchardy, and opening his mouth, he dropped out the bullet.

Bang! went a second chamber of the revolver.

"Ha! ha!" laughed Bouchardy again, and again he dropped a bullet from his mouth.

"Ha! ha!" chuckled a big dromedary at the right of the Sheik, and the man turned in startled fright and fired at the animal.

"Ha! ha!" said the dromedary, and Bouchardy stepped up to it, and opening its mouth, produced the bullet.

"Ha! ha!" said the dromedary. "Ha! ha!" said the donkey of the Sheik's favorite wife. "Ha! ha!" said the horse of the vizier.

"Dogs, scoundrels, cowards!" sneered the dromedary.

Bang! But not the bang of the revolver, and the flint-lock of the vizier was smoking, and the dromedary had fallen, and its life blood was pouring out on the sand. Bang! bang! went other flint-locks. Bullets whizzed by Bouchardy'a ears, and he did not take them out of his mouth.

"Hold!" came a voice from the mouth of the dying camel. "The curse of Allah is on the tribe. He has loosed the Singing Sands from their place, and they are sweeping over the desert to overwhelm you. Listen!"

Guns that had been raised to the position of aim were lowered, half-drawn swords dropped back into their scabbards, and all listened as a low hum was heard in the distance, and rapidly began to grow louder and nearer.