After that, I mounted a milk-wagon and served milk in the region of
West Fifty-seventh Street. This drop into the cellars of the
well-to-do gave me contact from another angle with janitors,
janitresses, and servants. I started at four o'clock each morning. I
did not finish until late in the afternoon, but I had all of Sunday
off. I found my way by the touch of the hand, and very soon I seemed
to have the eyesight of a cat to find shafts, dumb-waiters, circuitous
turnings in the sub-cellars of large apartment houses.

The life of a milkman is a busy one, but I found time to mumble my
Greek roots as I trotted in and out of the cellars. My grammar, when
weather permitted, was tied open to a bottle in the cart.

From the milk-wagon I went to a publishing house. They had advertised
for a man with some literary ability, and I had the effrontery to
apply. I drove the milk-cart in front of the publishing-house door,
and, with my working clothes bespattered with milk and grease, I
applied personally for the job.

"What are your qualifications?" the manager asked.

"What kind of work do you want done?" I asked in reply. I found that
they were going to make a new dictionary of the English language, but
their method of making it obviated the necessity for scholarship. They
had an 1859 edition of Webster and a lot of the newer dictionaries,
and Webster was to be the basis of the new one, and we were to crib
and transcribe from all the rest. I was the third man employed on the
work.

My salary to begin with was ten dollars a week. The word "salary" had