: Twenty years a fakir by Weldon S James - Weldon S. James; Door-to-door selling; Peddling

@FreeBooksThu 08 Jun, 2023

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to low water mark, but that needed to cause no uneasiness. A walk of a day and I could be feasting on the fatted calf.

But to be stranded in Davenport was a different matter. I remember, in the midst of my troubles, there popped into my head an old couplet, learned in my days at the public school:

"Take heart, nor of the laws of fate complain; Though now it be cloudy, it will clear up again."

With that in my mind I took on a moral brace and marched down the street, willing to meet fate half way, and looking for something to do that might show a profit, however small.

I found it.

Had I not been cut out by nature, and the special design of Providence for the vocation which I have so successfully followed, it is more than likely I would have sat down, with my head on my hands, and wept. I confess I felt like it for a moment. When I had resolutely thrust such weakness out of my mind, and taken a calmer view of the situation, I saw a glimmer of light ahead.

A miserably written placard in a store window furnished the inspiration.

In my early school days if there was any one thing I excelled in it was penmanship, and with decent opportunity, and a propulsion in such direction, I might have made a fair draughtsman, or a very decent sign painter. Whether I would have made a fortune or not is another question.

At this moment of distress I remembered some "work" I had seen done in Chicago by a traveling "artist," and that for the sake of amusement I had tried my hand at it for an hour. I went back to the hotel, and begged or borrowed a piece of soap. Then I worked store after store for sign work, promising to put up a magnificent one on each window, done in soap froth, for the inconsiderable sum of ten cents.

The thing was new to the most of them, and perhaps curiosity helped me. I was curious myself to know what I could do; and am not sure whether I was glad or sorry when the first merchant told me to fall to work.

But at it I went. A dozen strokes gave me confidence, and half a dozen jobs gave me skill. I made one dollar during the rest of the day, and two and a half the next. I lived on crackers and cheese the whole time, and cleaned the windows of a livery barn for permission to sleep in the office. The third day I had apparently exhausted the field, business fell off, and I determined to leave the town.

First, I went to the hospital, to take leave of Mr. Carlysle, and tried to force on him a share of my earnings. He refused, as at present he was well taken care of, and expected a small remittance in a few days, when he hoped to be sufficiently recovered to leave the city and attend to some business which would probably net him a little money. Bidding him good-bye, I slung my budget on my back and took to the ties, without any fair idea of where I was going or what I should do. I had a cash capital of three or four dollars in my pocket, and the art of making soap-foam signs at my fingers' ends. I had also heard of a pressing want for laborers in a construction gang which was working on an intersecting railroad, and if the worst came to the worst I was able to handle a shovel or pick against the best of them. I was not brought up on a farm for nothing.

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