The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1901-03-21

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| old man took a tumble. Then he made
Jim a proposition that if he would cav
and split into stove wood lengths the
wood that he had stacked up for the
winter he would give him the jewelry
for his very own.
THE wood-pile was perhaps a little
smaller than the Masonic Temple, but
know that Jim didn't think it was very
much smaller. He tackled the job
! however, and he worked at 1t steadily
all summer and at last got it done
Then the old man took out the gold
watch that he had got with some other
stuff on a foreclosed chattel mortgage
and told Jim that if he would help with
| the corn gathering and shucking he
would let him have the watch. Jim
took him up, and worked like good
fellow until the last ear was in the crib.
A few weeks later he showed the bric7
a-brac to a shoe drummer and got the
drummer's opinion on IT, After that he
sWore that he would never trade the
sweat Of his brow for gold-fllled decora-
tons as long as he lived, and he kept
his word.
Father said lated on that it gave the
boy an impetus, but It didn't seem to
me that he realized it at the time be-
cause when Jim took the agency for
The Glory of the East which was a
fat padded morocco book, with more
gold on It than there was in my fathers
watch and real steel engravings, he said
that James had just about struck his
gait, and that he always said that
James would never amount to a hill of
beans. When Jim came back from his
tour broke, he predicted that the young
man fouId be an inmate of a tramp
lodging house inside of year, and be
permanent public charge, at a conser-
vative estimate. within five years more.
About that time Jim began smoking
cigarettes, a habit which he still re-
tains,, and there was little hope enter
tanned for him anywhere after that.
II think Jim next went into the shirt
business. He had got a scientific sys-
tenn somewhere for cutting out shirts,
and he went around taking measures
and orders, and then did the cutting.
The great trouble with that was that
nobody seemed able to put the pieces to-
gether again after he had cut them
out. Experienced seamstresses sat up
nights wrnkling their foreheads over
the puzzle sections, and grew gray and
haggard in their efforts to conquer the
system. The result was bankruptcy
once more and after Jims mother got
him Strengthened out he went into the
lamp chimney business.
HE had lamp chimney that you
could drive nails with or stick up for
pins in a bowling alley. I guess they
really were good, but he fell down in
his demonstration. He invited the mer-
chants around to the hotel sample
rooms to test his goods and they all
showed up at the appointed time. was
there, too. Jim actually did drive tacks
into the table with his chimneys, and
he threw them against the wall as IL he
were trying to put man out on strikes.
Everybody seemed favorably impressed,
and 1t seemed as If it was only ques-
ton of the size of the order with them,
when | took up a chimney and care
lessly tossed 1t on the floor. 1t didn't
do thing but break in f1rty thousand
pieces, and then they all gave my cous-
In the horse laugh and went away. We
had always been good friends, Jim and
|. but that nearly put an end to our
1T went on that way for year or
two Jim was always getting UP some
scheme or another and falling down on
t. Once in awhile he made q little pile,
cut he always blew it in, and he didn't
seem TO be worried when it was gone. |
A G . rollirsr stone he made q great i'm |