But I couldn't get any work.Yet I was a bargain in the labour market.I was twenty-two years old,weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds stripped,every pound of which was excellent for toil;and the last traces of my scurvy were vanishing before a treatment of potatoes chewed raw.I tackled every opening for employment.I tried to become a studio model,but there were too many fine-bodied young fellows out of jobs.I answered advertisements of elderly invalids in need of companions.And Ialmost became a sewing machine agent,on commission,without salary.But poor people don't buy sewing machines in hard times,so I was forced to forgo that employment.
Of course,it must be remembered that along with such frivolous occupations I was trying to get work as wop,lumper,and roustabout.But winter was coming on,and the surplus labour army was pouring into the cities.Also I,who had romped along carelessly through the countries of the world and the kingdom of the mind,was not a member of any union.
I sought odd jobs.I worked days,and half-days,at anything Icould get.I mowed lawns,trimmed hedges,took up carpets,beat them,and laid them again.Further,I took the civil service examinations for mail carrier and passed first.But alas!there was no vacancy,and I must wait.And while I waited,and in between the odd jobs I managed to procure,I started to earn ten dollars by writing a newspaper account of a voyage I had made,in an open boat down the Yukon,of nineteen hundred miles in nineteen days.I didn't know the first thing about the newspaper game,but I was confident I'd get ten dollars for my article.
But I didn't.The first San Francisco newspaper to which I mailed it never acknowledged receipt of the manuscript,but held on to it.The longer it held on to it the more certain I was that the thing was accepted.
And here is the funny thing.Some are born to fortune,and some have fortune thrust upon them.But in my case I was clubbed into fortune,and bitter necessity wielded the club.I had long since abandoned all thought of writing as a career.My honest intention in writing that article was to earn ten dollars.And that was the limit of my intention.It would help to tide me along until I got steady employment.Had a vacancy occurred in the post office at that time,I should have jumped at it.
But the vacancy did not occur,nor did a steady job;and Iemployed the time between odd jobs with writing a twenty-one-thousand-word serial for the "Youth's Companion."I turned it out and typed it in seven days.I fancy that was what was the matter with it,for it came back.
It took some time for it to go and come,and in the meantime Itried my hand at short stories.I sold one to the "Overland Monthly "for five dollars.The "Black Cat"gave me forty dollars for another.The "Overland Monthly "offered me seven dollars and a half,pay on publication,for all the stories I should deliver.
I got my bicycle,my watch,and my father's mackintosh out of pawn and rented a typewriter.Also,I paid up the bills I owed to the several groceries that allowed me a small credit.I recall the Portuguese groceryman who never permitted my bill to go beyond four dollars.Hopkins,another grocer,could not be budged beyond five dollars.
And just then came the call from the post office to go to work.
It placed me in a most trying predicament.The sixty-five dollars I could earn regularly every month was a terrible temptation.Icouldn't decide what to do.And I'll never be able to forgive the postmaster of Oakland.I answered the call,and I talked to him like a man.I frankly told him the situation.It looked as if Imight win out at writing.The chance was good,but not certain.
Now,if he would pass me by and select the next man on the eligible list and give me a call at the next vacancy--But he shut me off with:"Then you don't want the position?""But I do,"I protested."Don't you see,if you will pass me over this time--""If you want it you will take it,"he said coldly.
Happily for me,the cursed brutality of the man made me angry.
"Very well,"I said."I won't take it."
