I don't know.I only know that when a man is a straight sort of fellow, and can show up, we say he's got the goods with him."They sat after lunch in the library, before an open window, looking into a lovely sunken garden.Blossoms were breaking out on every side, and robins, thrushes, and blackbirds chirped and trilled and whistled, as Mount Dunstan and Penzance led G.Selden on to paint further pictures for them.
Some of them were rather painful, Penzance thought.As connected with youth, they held a touch of pathos Selden was all unconscious of.He had had a hard life, made up, since his tenth year, of struggles to earn his living.He had sold newspapers, he had run errands, he had swept out a "candy store." He had had a few years at the public school, and a few months at a business college, to which he went at night, after work hours.He had been "up against it good and plenty," he told them.He seemed, however, to have had a knack of making friends and of giving them "a boost along"when such a chance was possible.Both of his listeners realised that a good many people had liked him, and the reason was apparent enough to them.
"When a chap gets sorry for himself," he remarked once, "he's down and out.That's a stone-cold fact.There's lots of hard-luck stories that you've got to hear anyhow.The fellow that can keep his to himself is the fellow that's likely to get there.""Get there?" the vicar murmured reflectively, and Selden chuckled again.
"Get where he started out to go to--the White House, if you like.The fellows that have got there kept their hard-luck stories quiet, I bet.Guess most of 'em had plenty during election, if they were the kind to lie awake sobbing on their pillows because their feelings were hurt."He had never been sorry for himself, it was evident, though it must be admitted that there were moments when the elderly English clergyman, whose most serious encounters had been annoying interviews with cottagers of disrespectful manner, rather shuddered as he heard his simple recital of days when he had tramped street after street, carrying his catalogue with him, and trying to tell his story of the Delkoff to frantically busy men who were driven mad by the importunate sight of him, to worried, ill-tempered ones who broke into fury when they heard his voice, and to savage brutes who were only restrained by law from kicking him into the street.
"You've got to take it, if you don't want to lose your job.
Some of them's as tired as you are.Sometimes, if you can give 'em a jolly and make 'em laugh, they'll listen, and you may unload a machine.But it's no merry jest just at first--particularly in bad weather.The first five weeks I was with the Delkoff I never made a sale.Had to live on my ten per, and that's pretty hard in New York.Three and a half for your hall bedroom, and the rest for your hash and shoes.
But I held on, and gradually luck began to turn, and I began not to care so much when a man gave it to me hot."The vicar of Mount Dunstan had never heard of the "hall bedroom" as an institution.A dozen unconscious sentences placed it before his mental vision.He thought it horribly touching.A narrow room at the back of a cheap lodging house, a bed, a strip of carpet, a washstand--this the sole refuge of a male human creature, in the flood tide of youth, no more than this to come back to nightly, footsore and resentful of soul, after a day's tramp spent in forcing himself and his wares on people who did not want him or them, and who found infinite variety in the forcefulness of their method of saying so.
"What you know, when you go into a place, is that nobody wants to see you, and no one will let you talk if they can help it.The only thing is to get in and rattle off your stunt before you can be fired out."Sometimes at first he had gone back at night to the hall bedroom, and sat on the edge of the narrow bed, swinging his feet, and asking himself how long he could hold out.But he had held out, and evidently developed into a good salesman, being bold and of imperturbable good spirits and temper, and not troubled by hypersensitiveness.Hearing of the "hall bedroom," the coldness of it in winter, and the breathless heat in summer, the utter loneliness of it at all times and seasons, one could not have felt surprise if the grown-up lad doomed to its narrowness as home had been drawn into the electric-lighted gaiety of Broadway, and being caught in its maelstrom, had been sucked under to its lowest depths.But it was to be observed that G.Selden had a clear eye, and a healthy skin, and a healthy young laugh yet, which were all wonderfully to his credit, and added enormously to one's liking for him.
"Do you use a typewriter?" he said at last to Mr.
Penzance."It would cut out half your work with your sermons.
If you do use one, I'd just like to call your attention to the Delkoff.It's the most up-to-date machine on the market to-day," drawing out the catalogue.
"I do not use one, and I am extremely sorry to say that I could not afford to buy one," said Mr.Penzance with considerate courtesy, "but do tell me about it.I am afraid Inever saw a typewriter."