ht. He touched the Doctor's
hand.

"That's it! That's the very thing, sir! Write that!"

The Doctor hesitated. Richling sat gazing at him, afraid to move an eye
lest he should lose an advantage. The Doctor turned to his desk and
wrote.

* * *

On the next morning Richling did not come for his breakfast; and, not
many days after, Dr. Sevier received through the mail the following
letter:--

NEW ORLEANS, December 2, 1857.

DEAR DOCTOR,--I've got the place. I'm Reisen's book-keeper. I'm
earning my living. And I like the work. Bread, the word bread,
that has so long been terrible to me, is now the sweetest word
in the language. For eighteen months it was a prayer; now it's
a proclamation.

I've not only got the place, but I'm going to keep it. I find I
have new powers; and the first and best of them is the power to
throw myself into my work and make it _me_. It's not a task;
it's a mission. Its being bread, I suppose, makes it easier to
seem so; but it should be so if it was pork and garlic, or rags
and raw-hides.

My maxim a year ago, though I didn't know it then, was to do
what I liked. Now it's to like what I do. I understand it now.
And I understand now, too, that a man who expects to retain
employment must yield a profit. He must be worth more than he
costs. I thank God for the discipline of the last year and a
half. I thank him that I did not fall where, in my cowardice, I
so often prayed to fall, into the hands of foolish benefactors.
You wouldn't believe this of me, I know; but it's true. I have
been taught what life is; I never would have learned it any
other way.

And still another thing: I have been taught to know what the
poor suffer. I know their feelings, their temptations, their
hardships, their sad mistakes, and the frightful mistakes and
oversights the rich make concerning them, and the ways to give
them true and helpful help. And now, if God ever gives me
competency, whether he gives me abundance or not, I know what
he intends me to do. I was once, in fact and in sentiment, a
brother to the rich; but I know that now he has trained me to
be a brother to the poor. Don't think I am going to be foolish.
I remember that I'm brother to the rich too; but I'll be the
other as well. How wise