A DISCONTENTED BOY.
“I do think that if there is a mean business in the world, I am engaged
in it.”
Gus Robbins suspended for a moment the work of folding up the numerous
bolts of calico he had taken down from the shelves for the inspection of
a customer who had just departed without purchasing anything, and
leaning on the counter, gazed longingly through the glass door into the
street. It was a bright winter day. The sleighing was excellent, and the
principal thoroughfare of the thriving little city of Foxboro’ was
filled with sleighs which dashed by in both directions, carrying loads
of gay pleasure-seekers, all of whom, Gus noticed with no little
bitterness of heart, seemed to be enjoying themselves to the fullest
extent. It was just before the holidays, and everybody seemed to be
making unusual preparations for them. The store was filled with
customers almost all the time, and Gus had stood in his place behind the
counter, and taken down and put up bales of goods until he was almost
tired out, and completely disgusted with the store and everything
belonging to it. Just now there was a little lull in business, and Gus
had a few minutes to himself. He improved them, as he generally improved
his moments of leisure, by growling over his hard lot in life, and
drawing a contrast between his own situation and that of some of the
other boys of his acquaintance in the city.
“There are no such things as peace and pleasure for the unfortunate
fellow who makes his bread and butter by clerking in a dry-goods store,”
continued Gus, spitefully banging a bolt of calico down upon the
counter. “Everybody is happy except me. Other boys are out behind their
fast horses having a good time, and here I am shut up in this miserable
old store, and have been ever since seven o’clock this morning. This
thing is getting to be a little too monotonous, the first thing you
know, and I am not going to put up with it much longer. If I had money,
I wouldn’t stay in this city twenty-four hours longer. Great Cæsar!”
Gus brought his soliloquy to a sudden close, and the bolt of calico he
had picked up to place upon the shelf dropped from his hands. While he
was talking to himself he kept his gaze directed toward the street, and
saw a red-faced man pass one of the windows and turn toward the door. As
he laid his hand upon the knob, somebody in the street accosted him, and
the red-faced man turned about and entered into conversation with him.
Gus looked at him for a moment, and then ran his eyes hastily around the
store as if he were looking for some way of escape.
“He’ll be in here in a second more,” said he, to himself, “and how shall
I put him off? I’ve told him so many lies that I shall have to get a
fresh stock on hand before I can tell him any more.”
The expression that rested on the boy’s face during the next
half-minute, seemed to indicate that he was revolving a very perplexing
problem in his mind. Suddenly he brightened up and with another glance
at the door, passed rapidly around the counter, and crossed over to the
other side of the store, where another clerk was at work folding up some
goods.
“I say, Sam,” exclaimed Gus, in a hurried whisper; “will you add another
to the long list of favors you have done me?”
“Well, I don’t know,” replied Sam, hesitatingly. “Depends upon what it
is. If you want to borrow any more——”
“I don’t,” interrupted Gus. “But Meyers is coming after what I owe him,
and there he is now. Tell him that I have gone out and shan’t be back
for a week. If you will do that much for me I will repay you——”
Gus did not have time to say how or when he would repay Sam, for at this
moment the red-faced man turned half around and placed his hand on the
door-knob. Gus quickly ducked his head and stole along behind the
counter toward the back part of the store, until he came to a door
opening into the warehouse.
He straightened up when he reached this place of refuge, and just as he
did so the opening and closing of the front door told him that Mr.
Meyers, the Jew who kept the little cigar and tobacco stand around the
corner, had entered on one of his regular weekly dunning visits.
“Much good may it do him,” thought Gus, keeping the door open about half
an inch so that he could see all that passed in the store. “He is a
regular leech, and if I could only settle up with him I’d pay him for
his persistency by buying my cigars and fine cut somewhere else.”
The visitor held a long interview with Sam—so long that Gus began to be
very impatient, and at last to tremble for fear that his father, who was
busy with the books in the office, might come out and find him there.
Gus could not hear what they said, but he could see, by Mr. Meyers’s
emphatic gestures, that he was very much in earnest about something. As
soon as the man left the store, Gus drew a long breath of relief and
came out of his hiding-place. The smile on his face showed that he was
very much pleased with the success of his little stratagem.
“O, there’s nothing to grin over, old fellow,” said Sam. “If you know
when you are well off you will rake fifteen dollars together pretty
lively, I tell you.”
“Fifteen dollars!” replied Gus. “I don’t owe him any such sum as that.”
“He’s got a bill made out for it, anyhow.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him that you had gone out somewhere on business, and that you
would call and pay him to-morrow afternoon.”
“To-morrow afternoon!” echoed Gus. “Great Cæsar! How am I going to raise
fifteen dollars between this time and that?”
“I give it up,” replied Sam.
“To-morrow afternoon!” gasped Gus, as visions of a stormy interview with
the impatient and angry cigar vendor flitted through his mind.
“Yes; I tried to put him off, but he wouldn’t be put off, so I had to
tell him something definite.”
“You had no business to tell him that, at any rate,” snapped Gus. “You
know I couldn’t keep that promise.”
“Well, the next time you want any lies told you can just stay in the
store and tell them yourself,” retorted Sam. “I shall not do it any
more, and you needn’t waste your time and breath in asking me. I have
stood between you and your creditors just as long as I am going to; but
I’ll tell you one thing: You had better settle with that Jew, or he will
go to your father with his bill. Then won’t you be in a fix?”
“Whew!” exclaimed Gus, who was not a little alarmed.
“But remember that my claim is to be settled first,” continued Sam. “You
have owed me money longer than you have owed him, and I want you to
begin to pony up. I am tired of waiting.”
“You will have plenty of time to get rested again before you get the
money, and so will that Jew,” thought Gus, as he turned and walked back
to his own counter. “Is it any wonder that I want to get away from
here?”
No, it was no wonder that Gus was always in trouble, but he had no one
to thank for it but himself. He had a comfortable home, a kind father
and mother, and there was more than one boy in the city who would have
been glad to change places with him. The great trouble with Gus was,
that he would not work if he could help it, and he had no idea of the
value of money.
Mr. Robbins, who had once been a poor boy, and who had earned every
dollar he possessed by his own unaided efforts, thought that every youth
ought to learn how to take care of himself; so as soon as Gus and Bob
(that was the name of Gus’s younger brother) had completed the course at
the High School, they were placed in the store, given the free use of
the money they earned and assured that they would be promoted and their
wages increased as fast as their services would warrant. They each
received two hundred and fifty dollars a year, and that was fifty
dollars more than inexperienced clerks had ever before been paid in that
store; but Gus declared that it was but little better than nothing at
all. He had some very grand ideas, and was frequently heard to say that
he did not intend to be a dry goods’ clerk all his life.
“I don’t want you to be,” said his father, who one day happened to be
standing near when Gus made this declaration. “Clerks are necessary, but
if you have brains and energy enough to work your way up higher, I shall
be only be too glad to see you do it. I hope you will some day be a
prosperous merchant; but you never can be unless you know all about
business. In order to learn it you must begin at the beginning.”
“And work for two hundred and fifty dollars,” said Gus. “How is a fellow
to get rich on that, I’d like to know?”
“By saving; that is the only way.”
“But I have nothing to save. After I drew my wages last month I bought a
suit of clothes, and a dollar—just one little dollar—was all I had to
show for twenty-six days’ work.”
“And what did you do with that one little dollar?”
“I—I believe I spent it.”
“Of course you did. If you had saved it you would have been just a
dollar ahead.”
“And if I saved a dollar every month, I should have just twelve dollars
at the end of the year,” said Gus. “That’s a magnificent sum.”
“But you don’t need a suit of new clothes every thirty days, and most of
the time you could save more than a dollar a month. The amount of your
savings is not so important as it is that you should get in the way of
saving something—no matter how small the amount may be. If you begin by
saving four dollars every month, you will find it just as easy after a
while to save eight; for good habits, like bad ones, grow stronger every
day.”
“But I can’t be satisfied to plod along in that way,” said Gus, to
himself. “If I could have two or three hundred dollars all in a lump, so
that I could buy some things I need, pay all my debts and have a
good-sized nest-egg left, I might get up ambition enough to go to
saving; but this thing of laying by pennies—Pshaw!”
Mr. Robbins often talked to his boys in this way, and he had finally
succeeded in convincing Bob that it was not best to despise the day of
small things, and that the surest road to prosperity was the one his
father had pointed out. Like his brother, Bob had been in the habit of
spending every cent he made, and more, too, if he could get it; but of
late he had taken to saving, and now he had grown to be, to quote from
Gus, “the very quintessence of meanness.” But he had money in the bank,
and being safely out of debt, he was not continually harassed by duns as
his brother was. More than that, he got into the way of being very
attentive to his work (one good habit leads to another, you know), and
before he had been in the store a year he was given entire charge of one
branch of his father’s business, and his wages were increased.
This left Gus at the very lowest round of the ladder. He was obliged to
open the store in the morning, build the fires and sweep out, and he
looked upon this as very degrading work. He grew more negligent and
discontented every day, and always made it a point, after the store was
closed for the night, to make up for the tiresome hours he had spent
behind the counter. He often wished for Ned Ackerman. When the latter
was in his father’s employ he had a companion who was always ready to
join him in any thing; but Ned was in Texas, Bob had gone back on him,
and Gus was very lonely.
Our discontented dry-goods clerk received a very severe blow, and the
little ambition he had was all crushed out of him when his younger
brother was placed over him. It was a disgrace that he could not put up
with, and so he tried to run away from it. There was a news-depôt for
sale in the city, and Gus could have purchased it on very advantageous
terms, if he had only had the money; but he didn’t have it. Mr. Robbins,
who knew more about his son’s habits than Gus thought he did, would not
advance it, and so Gus was obliged to stay in the store. Everything
seemed to be working against him, and Gus grew desperate. He spent his
money as fast as it was paid to him, and when it gave out, he went as
deeply in debt as he could go. He had always been able to satisfy his
creditors by paying them a little every month; but now they were getting
impatient, and were all presenting their bills at once.
“Fifteen dollars!” repeated Gus, as he walked toward his own counter.
“To-morrow afternoon!” he murmured, as he chucked one of the bolts of
calico spitefully upon the shelf. “Moses! won’t there be a row, unless I
can think up some plausible story between this time and that! I must owe
at least fifty dollars—almost three months’ wages. I wish I could leave
here this very night, and never set eyes on this town again! But how can
I get away without money? That’s the question.”
Just then Gus heard something fall on the counter, and looked up to see
his brother Bob walking through the store, with a bundle of letters and
papers in his hand. He had just returned from the post-office, and had
thrown a letter for his brother on the counter, as he passed by.
“Just look at young Dignity!” said Gus, as his brother disappeared
through the door that led into the office. “One would think, by the airs
he throws on, that he owned the store! Who has been writing to me, I
wonder!”
Gus allowed the letter to lie where it had fallen, until he had cleared
the counter, folded all the goods and placed them on the shelves, where
they belonged. Then he picked it up and glanced at the envelope, fully
expecting to recognise the handwriting of some of his creditors, who not
unfrequently wrote notes to him, to remind him that there was a little
balance due them, which they would be happy to receive at the earliest
possible moment that he could make it convenient to hand it to them. But
this letter was not from a creditor. It was from Ned Ackerman, the very
boy who had been in his thoughts a score of times that day. Gus ran his
eyes hastily over the last few lines above the signature, and saw
something in them that excited and delighted him.
“Hurrah!” said he to himself. “Plague take it!”
These two exclamations, so different in meaning, were called forth by
very different emotions. He had read enough of the letter to learn that
his old friend Ned was having a fine time down there in Texas; that he
was lonely in spite of it, and wanted Gus and his brother to come on and
pay him a long visit; and that the want of money need not prevent them
from doing so, for Ned would send them enough to pay their fare and all
other expenses. But before Gus could read any farther, he was
interrupted by the entrance of two or three ladies, who came up to his
counter. They proved to be very exacting, too, and Gus handed down a
good many different kinds of cloth for their inspection. He fumed
inwardly and used some hard words to himself, while he was doing it, and
as soon as the ladies had departed, he caught up his letter and read it
through.
“Of course I’ll go,” said he, so delighted with the idea that he hardly
knew what he was about; “but Bob shan’t! We don’t want him, and so I’ll
say nothing to him about this letter. I shan’t say anything to father
either, for he would be sure to tell me to stay at home.”
Gus had found a way out of his troubles at last. He wrote a reply to
Ned’s letter that very night, and was as impatient to hear from him
again as Ned was to hear from Gus. He made no effort to raise money to
pay his debts, and indeed he did not intend to pay them at all. He went
to see all his creditors, as soon as he could find time, just to keep
them from calling upon him at the store, and by making them some very
fair promises, he succeeded in quieting them for a while. When that was
done, he breathed easier, and the only thing he had to worry over and
feel anxious about was the expected letter from Ned, which he hoped
would bring a check for the money he needed, and contain instructions as
to the route he was to travel, in order to reach Palos.
“And when I get there I’ll stay,” Gus often told himself. “I shall never
come back. I’ve had enough of this miserable life. What will I do and
where shall I go after I have finished my visit? I am sure I don’t know.
That is a matter I will decide when the time comes. I do hope Ned will
have no trouble in raising the money.”
Gus was not disappointed in his hopes. Ned was so anxious to have him
there that he did not delay writing, and in due time the looked-for
letter arrived. Gus could hardly control his exultation from those
around him. He wrote to his friend at once, saying that he would start
in a week, and that Ned must make his own calculations as to the time
his visitor would reach Palos, as he (Gus) had not she slightest idea
how long it would take him to make the journey, and Ned had forgotten to
enlighten him on this point.
Gus wanted to wait a week longer in order that he might draw the twenty
dollars and more that would then be due him from the store. It was the
longest week he had ever lived through, and the hardest too; but it came
to an end at last, and pay-day arrived. Gus drew his money when Bob did,
and as soon as he had put it into his pocket, he slipped out the back
door into an alley that ran behind the store, and started for home. He
made his way to the room in which he and Bob slept, opened his trunk
with a key he took from his pocket, deposited his money therein and took
out the check which he had kept locked up in the trunk ever since it
arrived.
“It is time to get this cashed now,” said he. “I put it off until the
last moment because I didn’t want to give anybody a chance to talk about
it. I don’t know what the cashier will think when I present it at the
bank, and I don’t care either, if he will only give me the money. I hope
Sam will have a good time getting what I owe him. He was waiting at the
office door to catch me when I came out, and that was the reason I
slipped into the alley.”
Gus locked his trunk, put the key and check carefully away in his pocket
and hurriedly left the house. Time was precious (he had less than half
an hour left in which to eat his dinner and return to the store) and he
made all the haste he could. He was particularly anxious to get through
with his business at the bank, for he had been dreading it all the week.
What would the folks in there think when he approached the cashier’s
desk and presented a check for a hundred dollars? He ran up the steps
while he was thinking about it, and almost into the arms of the very
person he most wished to avoid just then—the one who had waited to dun
him when he came out of his father’s office. Sam had drawn his month’s
wages and came to the bank to deposit them.
“Hallo!” exclaimed Sam. “Where did you go in such a hurry after you drew
your money? I didn’t see you come out of the office.”
“But I did come out, you see; for if I had stayed in, I couldn’t be
here, could I?”
“Hold on,” said Sam, as Gus tried to push him aside so that he could
enter the door. “This is a good time to settle up.”
“I will settle with you this afternoon, sure pop,” returned Gus.
“Why can’t you do it now? You have got your money, for I saw you draw
it.”
“I know it, but I haven’t got it now. I’ll be on hand this
evening—sure.”
“You said this afternoon,” answered Sam, looking suspiciously at Gus.
“Well, this afternoon, then.”
So saying, Gus crowded past Sam and went into the bank. To his great
relief there was no one in front of the cashier’s desk; no one present
to see him receive his hundred dollars. With a beating heart and
trembling hand he produced his check, and breathed a good deal easier
when he saw that the cashier did not exhibit any surprise at its
magnitude. He was in hopes that the man would be in a hurry about
cashing it, but instead of that he was very deliberate in his movements.
He looked at the check on all sides and then he looked at Gus.
“Who is this John Ackerman?” he asked.
“He used to be father’s book-keeper, you know,” said Gus.
“O, yes! Do you want us to collect this for you?”
“No, sir; I want the money on it now.”
“All right,” said the cashier, handing the check over the counter.
“Write your name across the back of it, and then take it home and let
your father sign it.”
“My father!” exclaimed Gus. “Not much. I mean—what do you want his
signature for?” he added hastily, and in great confusion, for the
cashier looked at him as if he were somewhat surprised at his
earnestness.
“To make ourselves secure,” said the cashier, by way of explanation.
“You see, Gus, this check is drawn by John Ackerman on the Planters’
Bank of Austin, Texas. He may have funds there, but he has none here,
and neither have you; and it is our rule in such cases to require an
endorsement other than that of the payee. You are the payee, you
know—the one to whom the check is made payable. Your father will sign
it.”
Gus felt like giving vent to his astonishment and rage in a series of
the wildest kind of yells, and it was all he could do to choke back his
tears. As soon as he had controlled himself so that he could speak, he
said:
“I don’t want to ask my father to endorse it. This is my own private
affair, and I don’t want you to say anything about it.”
“Of course not. We never talk about our business matters.”
“How long will it take to collect it?”
“Well, Austin is a long distance from here, and it will take two or
three weeks at least.”
“Great Cæsar!” was Gus’s mental exclamation. “Can I stand it to stay in
the store so much longer? Very well,” he said aloud, “I shall have to
ask you to collect it for me, if that is the best I can do.”
Gus turned about and walked out of the bank like one in a dream. He had
never in his life before been so badly disappointed. The reflection that
if he remained in the store a month longer, and could save all the money
he earned in that time, he would have twenty dollars more to be added to
the sum he already possessed, did not encourage him in the least. He
wanted his liberty more than he wanted a month’s wages, and besides he
was by no means sure that he would be able to save what he earned. If
his creditors became weary of having their debts paid by promises, and
presented their bills to his father, Gus knew that they would be
promptly settled, and that he could not draw a cent at the end of the
month. He turned these matters over in his mind while he was eating his
dinner, and the longer he pondered upon them the more he felt like
yelling. There were no customers in the store when he returned, but Sam
was leaning over the counter waiting for him.