of me my story. I forget what he said, it was brief and perhaps
commonplace, but I went out to walk the streets that night, full of
hope and courage. Before leaving that night I approached the little
man at the employment desk.

"Did you see that big fellow in a gray suit?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Who is he?"

"Mr. McBurney."

"The man whose name is on your letterhead?"

"The same."

"Great guns! and to think that I've been monkeying all these weeks
with a man like you--pardon me, brother!"

Robert R. McBurney was my friend to the day of his death. Many a time,
when out of the pit, I reminded him of the incident. It was from the
little man at the employment desk of the Twenty-third Street Y.M.C.A.
that I got my real introduction to business life--if the vocation of a
porter can be called "business."

I became an under-porter in a wholesale house on Broadway at five
dollars a week, and spent a winter at the job. The head of the house
was a leader of national reputation in his particular denomination. I
was sitting on the radiator one winter's morning before the store was