AN EFFORT TO OBTAIN EMPLOYMENT.
What a common occurrence it is for people to do foolish things. How
often we see a man of education and broad influence--a hard headed man
of sense, who has made his own way against stubborn opposition, and
accumulated great wealth--how often, I say, we see such a man exhibit
a degree of simplicity in money making or some other matter that would
seem weak in an untutored boy. When he already has more money than he
knows what to do with, he will perhaps hazard all on some wild cat
speculation, and in a very little while find himself penniless and
unable to furnish support for his family. Again he becomes the victim of
a confidence game, and only learns how he has been played with when he
has lost perhaps fifty thousand dollars by the unscrupulous sharpers
with whom he has been dealing.
Such exhibitions of weakness in men to whom the community looks for an
example are always surprising, always painful; but they teach us the
important fact that human nature is easily influenced, easily molded,
easily led this way or that when the proper influences are brought to
bear upon it.
It is not so strange, then, that young Herbert Randolph, fresh from
the country and as ignorant of the city as a native African, should
have become dazzled by the flattering prospects spread out before him.
What a busy city New York seemed to him when he landed from the boat
in the early morning! Everything was bustle and activity. People were
hurrying along the streets as he had never seen them move in his quiet
country town. No idlers were about. Men and boys alike were full of
business--they showed it in their faces, their every movement. These
facts impressed the young country lad far more than the tall buildings
and fine streets. His own active nature bounded with admiration
at the life and dash on every hand. He had been reared among sleepy
people--people in a rut, whose blood flowed as slowly as the sluggish
current upon which they floated towards their final destiny.
But young Randolph was not of their class. He had inherited an
active mind, and an ambition that made him chafe at his inharmonious
surroundings at home. The very atmosphere, therefore, of this great
city, laden with the hum of activity, was stimulating and even
intoxicating to his boundless ambition. He had been a great reader.
Biography had been his favorite pastime. He knew the struggles and
triumphs of many of our most conspicuous merchant princes. Not a few
familiar names, displayed on great buildings which towered over the tops
of their smaller neighbors, greeted his eyes as he approached the city
by boat, and passed through the streets after landing. These sights were
food for his imagination. He compared himself, his qualifications, his
poverty, and his opportunities for advancement in this world of activity
with the advent into New York of the men he had taken as models for his
own career. There was in a general way a striking likeness between the
two pictures as he viewed them. Their struggles had been so long and
fierce that it seemed to him they must have been made of iron to finally
win the fight.
Yet these very difficulties lent attractiveness to the picture. They
made heroes of his models, whose example he burned with enthusiasm to
follow. Thus it will be seen that in the early morning he expected to
meet bitter discouragements, to encounter poverty in its most depressing
form, and to meet rebuffs on the right hand and on the left. He expected
all this. He rather craved it from the sentimental, heroic standpoint,
because the men he had chosen to follow had been compelled to force
their way through a similar opposition.
From this view of the boy it is plain that he was sincere in thanking
young Bob Hunter, a little later, for the newsboy's generous offer to
take him into the paper trade. But a little later still, when he enters
the 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 this
vast city, he presents himself in an entirely new light. His head has
been turned. He has lost sight of the early struggles of his heroes,
and now revels in the brilliant pictures drawn by his imagination. How
flattering to himself are these airy, short lived fabrics, and how sweet
to his young ambition!
Had young Randolph been an ordinary boy of slow intellect, he would
never have indulged in these beautiful dreams, which to the stupid mind
would seem silly and absurd, but to him were living realities--creations
to beckon him on, to encourage him in the hours of danger and to sustain
him in the stern battle before him.
Did he then waste his time in what would seem wild imagination, when
a more practically minded boy would have been applying for work? Yes,
in the smaller sense, he idled his time away; but in the broader, he
builded better than he knew. To be sure, he had lost the opportunity of
securing a situation on that day--and he needed work urgently--but he
had fixed upon _an ideal_--a standard of his own, to be the goal of all
his efforts and struggles. And such an ideal was priceless to him. It
would prove priceless to any boy, for without lofty aims no young man
can ever hope to occupy a high position in life.
[Illustration: 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 in
finding a situation, but the fact that five thousand positions were
offered to him who knew nothing of the tremendous demand for such
situations entirely deluded him. Once forgetting this important point,
his mind ran on and on, growing bolder and bolder as thought sped
forward unrestrained in wild, hilarious delight.
What pleasure in that half hour's thought--sweet, pure, intoxicating
pleasure, finer and more delicate than any real scene in life can ever
afford.
But everything has a price, and that price must many times be paid in
advance. Those delightful moments passed in thinking out for himself a
grand career cost young Randolph far more than he felt he could afford
to pay. They cost him the opportunity of securing a position on that
day, and made him sick at his own ignorance and folly. He felt ashamed
of himself and disgusted at his stupidity, as he walked block after
block with tired feet and heavy heart, after being coldly turned away
from dozens of business houses with no encouragement whatever. He
went from banking to mercantile pursuits, then to insurance, to
manufacturing, and so on down, grade after grade, till he would have
been glad to get any sort of position at honest labor. But none was
offered to him and he found no opening of any sort.
Night was coming on. He was tired and hungry. His spirits ran low. In
the post office in the early part of the day they soared to unusual
height, and now they were correspondingly depressed. What should he do
next? Where should he spend the night? These questions pressed him for
an 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 his
time in silly speculation. He knew the young New Yorker would question
him, and he would have to hide the real cause of his failure, should he
join his friend. He was fast nearing Bob's place of business, and he
decided to stop for a few moments' reflection, and to rest his weary
limbs as well. Accordingly he stepped to the inner side of the flagging
and rested against the massive stone base of the Astor House.
Looking to his right Broadway extended down to the Battery, and to his
left it stretched far away northward. Up this famous thoroughfare a
mighty stream of humanity flowed homeward. Young Randolph watched the
scene with much interest, forgetting for a time his own heavy heart.
Soon, however, the question what to do with himself pressed him again
for an answer. How entirely alone he felt! Of all the thousands of
people passing by him, not one with a familiar face. Every one seemed
absorbed in himself, and took no more notice of our country lad than if
he had been a portion of the cold inanimate granite against which he
stood. 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 to
cheer him on his way.