ng on in the world called for complete concentration of
his efforts upon his own well-being. A pauper cannot be a
philanthropist. One cannot take nothing from nothing and make something.
To be of use to others he must first grasp what he required for himself.

Once he was settled and familiar enough with San Francisco to get from
the Ferry Building to the Mission and from the Marina to China Basin
without the use of a map he began to cast about for an opening. To make
an apprentice beginning in any of the professions required education. He
had that, he considered. It did not occur to him by what devious routes
men arrived at distinction in the professions. He thought of studying
for the law until the reception he got in various offices where he went
seeking for information discouraged him in that field. Law students were
a drug on the market.

"My dear young man," one kindly, gray-haired attorney told him, "you'd
be wasting your time. The law means a tremendous amount of intellectual
drudgery, and a slim chance of any great success unless you are gifted
with a special aptitude for certain branches of it. All the great
opportunities for a young man nowadays lie in business and
salesmanship."

Business and salesmanship being two things of which Thompson knew
himself to be profoundly ignorant, he made little headway. A successful
business operation, so far as he could observe, called for capital which
he did not possess. Salesmanship, when he delved into the method of
getting his foot on that rung of the ladder, required special training,
knowledge of a technical sort. That is, really successful salesmanship.
The other kind consisted of selling goods over a counter for ten dollars
per--with an excellent chance of continuing in that unenviable situation
until old age overtook him. This was an age of specialists--and he had
no specialty. Moreover, every avenue that he investigated seemed to be
jammed full of young men clamoring for a chance. The skilled trades had
their unions, their fixed hours of labor, fixed rates of pay. The big
men, the industrial managers, the men who stood out in the professions,
they had their own orbit into which he could not come until he had made
good. There were the two forces, the top and the bottom of the workaday
world. And he was in between, like a fish out of water.

Wherefore Thompson continued looking about for a number of weeks. He
looked for work, without finding it save in street gan