CHAPTER II.
AN EFFORT TO OBTAIN EMPLOYMENT.
What a common occurrence it is for people to do foolish things. Howoften we see a man of education and broad influence--a hard headed manof sense, who has made his own way against stubborn opposition, andaccumulated great wealth--how often, I say, we see such a man exhibita degree of simplicity in money making or some other matter that wouldseem weak in an untutored boy. When he already has more money than heknows what to do with, he will perhaps hazard all on some wild catspeculation, and in a very little while find himself penniless andunable to furnish support for his family. Again he becomes the victim ofa confidence game, and only learns how he has been played with when hehas lost perhaps fifty thousand dollars by the unscrupulous sharperswith whom he has been dealing.
Such exhibitions of weakness in men to whom the community looks for anexample are always surprising, always painful; but they teach us theimportant fact that human nature is easily influenced, easily molded,easily led this way or that when the proper influences are brought tobear upon it.
It is not so strange, then, that young Herbert Randolph, fresh fromthe country and as ignorant of the city as a native African, shouldhave become dazzled by the flattering prospects spread out before him.What a busy city New York seemed to him when he landed from the boatin the early morning! Everything was bustle and activity. People werehurrying along the streets as he had never seen them move in his quietcountry town. No idlers were about. Men and boys alike were full ofbusiness--they showed it in their faces, their every movement. Thesefacts impressed the young country lad far more than the tall buildingsand fine streets. His own active nature bounded with admirationat the life and dash on every hand. He had been reared among sleepypeople--people in a rut, whose blood flowed as slowly as the sluggishcurrent upon which they floated towards their final destiny.
But young Randolph was not of their class. He had inherited anactive mind, and an ambition that made him chafe at his inharmonioussurroundings at home. The very atmosphere, therefore, of this greatcity, laden with the hum of activity, was stimulating and evenintoxicating to his boundless ambition. He had been a great reader.Biography had been his favorite pastime. He knew the struggles andtriumphs of many of our most conspicuous merchant princes. Not a fewfamiliar names, displayed on great buildings which towered over the topsof their smaller neighbors, greeted his eyes as he approached the cityby boat, and passed through the streets after landing. These sights werefood for his imagination. He compared himself, his qualifications, hispoverty, and his opportunities for advancement in this world of activitywith the advent into New York of the men he had taken as models for hisown career. There was in a general way a striking likeness between thetwo pictures as he viewed them. Their struggles had been so long andfierce that it seemed to him they must have been made of iron to finallywin the fight.
Yet these very difficulties lent attractiveness to the picture. Theymade heroes of his models, whose example he burned with enthusiasm tofollow. Thus it will be seen that in the early morning he expected tomeet bitter discouragements, to encounter poverty in its most depressingform, and to meet rebuffs on the right hand and on the left. He expectedall this. He rather craved it from the sentimental, heroic standpoint,because the men he had chosen to follow had been compelled to forcetheir way through a similar opposition.
From this view of the boy it is plain that he was sincere in thankingyoung Bob Hunter, a little later, for the newsboy's generous offer totake him into the paper trade. But a little later still, when he entersthe post office and becomes intoxicated with the sudden, the unexpected,the overwhelming opportunities displayed before him--the urgent demands,even, for his services in helping to push forward the commerce of thisvast city, he presents himself in an entirely new light. His head hasbeen turned. He has lost sight of the early struggles of his heroes,and now revels in the brilliant pictures drawn by his imagination. Howflattering to himself are these airy, short lived fabrics, and how sweetto his young ambition!
Had young Randolph been an ordinary boy of slow intellect, he wouldnever have indulged in these beautiful dreams, which to the stupid mindwould seem silly and absurd, but to him were living realities--creationsto beckon him on, to encourage him in the hours of danger and to sustainhim in the stern battle before him.
Did he then waste his time in what would seem wild imagination, whena more practically minded boy would have been applying for work? Yes,in the smaller sense, he idled his time away; but in the broader, hebuilded better than he knew. To be sure, he had lost the opportunity ofsecuring a situation on that day--and he needed work urgently--but hehad fixed upon _an ideal_--a standard of his own, to be the goal of allhis efforts and struggles. And such an ideal was priceless to him. Itwould prove priceless to any boy, for without lofty aims no young mancan ever hope to occupy a high position in life.
MEMORIES OF COUNTRY LIFE--THE GREETING BY THE WAY.]
Of course he appears foolish in forgetting what he had anticipated,namely the difficulties he would in all probability experience infinding a situation, but the fact that five thousand positions wereoffered to him who knew nothing of the tremendous demand for suchsituations entirely deluded him. Once forgetting this important point,his mind ran on and on, growing bolder and bolder as thought spedforward unrestrained in wild, hilarious delight.
What pleasure in that half hour's thought--sweet, pure, intoxicatingpleasure, finer and more delicate than any real scene in life can everafford.
But everything has a price, and that price must many times be paid inadvance. Those delightful moments passed in thinking out for himself agrand career cost young Randolph far more than he felt he could affordto pay. They cost him the opportunity of securing a position on thatday, and made him sick at his own ignorance and folly. He felt ashamedof himself and disgusted at his stupidity, as he walked block afterblock with tired feet and heavy heart, after being coldly turned awayfrom dozens of business houses with no encouragement whatever. Hewent from banking to mercantile pursuits, then to insurance, tomanufacturing, and so on down, grade after grade, till he would havebeen glad to get any sort of position at honest labor. But none wasoffered to him and he found no opening of any sort.
Night was coming on. He was tired and hungry. His spirits ran low. Inthe post office in the early part of the day they soared to unusualheight, and now they were correspondingly depressed. What should he donext? Where should he spend the night? These questions pressed him foran answer. He thought of Bob Hunter, and his cheeks flushed with shame.He would not have the newsboy know how foolish he had been to waste histime in silly speculation. He knew the young New Yorker would questionhim, and he would have to hide the real cause of his failure, should hejoin his friend. He was fast nearing Bob's place of business, and hedecided to stop for a few moments' reflection, and to rest his wearylimbs as well. Accordingly he stepped to the inner side of the flaggingand rested against the massive stone base of the Astor House.
Looking to his right Broadway extended down to the Battery, and to hisleft it stretched far away northward. Up this famous thoroughfare amighty stream of humanity flowed homeward. Young Randolph watched thescene with much interest, forgetting for a time his own heavy heart.Soon, however, the question what to do with himself pressed him againfor an answer. How entirely alone he felt! Of all the thousands ofpeople passing by him, not one with a familiar face. Every one seemedabsorbed in himself, and took no more notice of our country lad than ifhe had been a portion of the cold inanimate granite against which hestood. Herbert felt this keenly, for in the country it was so different.There every one had a kind look or a pleasant word for a fellow man tocheer him on his way.