in the world, anyway, to keep a boy out of devilment. The boy who will
put into his head what he will get out of good books will win out over
the one who gets his clothes full of chalk from billiard cues. One day
the "Old Gentleman" saw me at the noon hour as I was going to the
library with a book under my arm. 'So you read nights, do you,
Billie,' said he. 'Well, you keep it up and you will get ahead of
the boys who don't.'

"Work? I worked like a beaver. I was due at seven in the morning. I
was always there several minutes before seven. One morning the old
gentleman came in real early and found me at work, while a couple of
the other boys were reading the papers and waiting for the seventh
strike, and before most of the stock boys had shown up. At noon I
would wrap bundles, take a blacking pot and mark cases, run the
elevator or do anything to "keep moving." I did not know that an eye
was on me all the time; but there was. At the end of a year the old
gentleman called me into the office and said: 'Billie, you've done
more this year than we have paid you for; here's a check for sixty
dollars, five dollars a month back pay. Your salary will be $25.00 a
month next year. You may also have a week's vacation.

"How big that sixty was! Rockefeller hasn't as much to-day as I had
then. What he has doesn't make him happy; he wants more. I had enough.
Why, I was able to buy a new rig-out. I can see that plaid suit of
clothes to this day! I could afford to go home looking slick, to visit
my mother and father; I could buy a present for my sweetheart, too.
The good Lord somehow very wisely puts 'notions' into a young man's
head about the time he begins to get on in the world, and the best
thing on earth for him when he is away from home is to have some girl
away back where he came from think a whole lot of him and send him a