ent of one of the large stores. I received only four dollars a
week; but, as our rent was small and our living expenses the very
minimum, I was able to meet my half of the joint expenditure. I worked
four months at selling pins and needles and thread and whalebone and a
thousand and one other things to be found in a well-stocked notion
department; and then, by a stroke of good luck and Minnie Plympton's
assistance, I got a place as demonstrator of a new brand of tea and
coffee in the grocery department of the same "emporium." My new work was
not only much lighter and pleasanter, but it paid me the munificent
salary of eight dollars a week.

But I did not want to be a demonstrator of tea and coffee all my life. I
had often thought I would like to learn shorthand and typewriting. The
demonstrator of breakfast foods at the next counter to mine was taking a
night course in bookkeeping; which gave me the idea of taking a similar
course in stenography. And then the Long Day began in earnest. I went to
night-school five nights out of every week for exactly sixty weeks,
running consecutively save for a fortnight's interim at the Christmas
holidays, when we worked nights at the store. On Saturday night, which
was the off night, I did my washing and ironing, and on Sunday night I
made, mended, and darned my clothes--that is, when there was any making,
mending, or darning to be done. As my wardrobe was necessarily slender,
I had much time to spare. This spare time on Sunday nights I spent in
study and reading. I studied English composition and punctuation, both
of which I would need later on when I should become a stenographer. I
also brushed up on my spelling and grammar, in which, I had been
informed--and correctly--the average stenographer is sadly remiss.

As for reading, which was the only recreation my life knew, it was of a
most desultory, though always mercenary sort. I read every book I could
get out of the circulating library which, from its title or general
character as summarized in the newspaper reviews, I thought might help
me to solve the problem of earning a good livelihood. The title of one
book particularly attracted me--a book which was so much in demand that
I had to wait a whole six months before I succeeded in getting it
through the slow and devious process peculiar to circulating libraries.
That book was "Up from Slavery," and it brought home to me as nothing
else could have done what was the real trouble wi