s just enough to pay my
steerage fare to Sydney, but I had still some days to put in and there
was my hotel bill. I concluded I had to make money somehow. I tried one
of the papers, but though the editor willingly agreed to accept a long
article from me, dealing with my old life in San Francisco from my new
standpoint, his best scale of pay was so poor that I frankly declined to
wet a pen for it. Journalistic rates in the East seem about three times
as high as in the West.

I went to a man in the town who was under considerable obligations to me
for holding my tongue about a certain transaction, and asked him to cash
a cheque for a hundred dollars. He refused point-blank. I never
regretted so in my life that there are things one can't do and still
retain one's self-respect. I could, I know, have sold some information
to his greatest enemy for a very considerable sum. I was, indeed,
approached on the point. However, I couldn't do it, worse luck, so I
washed my hands of this gentleman, and went to a comparatively poor man,
who helped me over the fence. Even if I had no luck I could still go
steerage. But I meant going first-class. And I did. If I had put up my
ante I meant staying with the game.

For a day after my agent's letter came a letter from a shipping friend
in Liverpool. I had been "previous" enough to write him from New York
for a good introduction in San Francisco. He sent me a letter to an old
friend of his who occupied a pretty important post in the city, one as
important, let us say, as that of a Chief of Customs. I laughed when I
saw the letter, for I knew if I could make myself solid with this
gentleman I had the San Franciscan folks where their hair was short.
It's a case of give or take there, sell or be sold, commercial honesty
is good as long as it pays. I whistled and sang, and took a cocktail on
the strength of it.

In these little commonplace adventures I had some luck. That I have
written many articles on steamships has often helped me in travel, and
it helped me now. It was an unexpected stroke of fortune that the
gentleman to whom I took the letter was not only an extremely good sort,
but when I learnt that he knew my name, and had seen some of my work, I
found it was all right. I was not only all right, for inside of an hour
I had a first-class ticket to Sydney, with a deck cabin thrown in, for
the very reasonable sum of one hundred dollars. I have a suspicion that
I might have got it for les