was, that as a
profession engineering was not for me. I knew that to take it up I
needed a good education, and that I did not have. I didn't like the
trade, anyway, and didn't care whether I worked or not. That is the
reason I lost my job.

One afternoon my employer sent me up Newark Avenue for a suit of clothes
that had been made to order. He told me to get them and bring them back
as soon as I could. I must say right here that my employer was a good
man, and he took quite a liking to me. Many a time he told me he would
make a great engineer out of me. I often look back and ask myself the
question, "Did I miss my vocation?" And then there comes a voice, which
I recognize as God's, saying, "You had to go through all this in order
to help others with the same temptations and the same sins," and I say,
"Amen."

After getting the clothes I went back to the building where I
worked--No. 9 Exchange Place, Jersey City--and found the door locked. I
waited around for a while, for I thought my employer wanted his clothes
or he would not have sent me for them. Finally I got tired of waiting,
and after trying the door once more and finding it still locked, I said
to myself, "I'll just put these clothes in the furniture store next door
and I'll get them to-morrow morning." I left them and told the man I
would call for them in the morning, and started for home.

I was in bed dreaming of Indians and other things, when mother wakened
me, shouting, "Where's the man's clothes?" I couldn't make out at first
what all the racket was about. Then I heard men's voices talking in the
yard, and recognized Mr. M., my Sunday-school teacher, and my employer,
the man that was going to make a great engineer out of me. I went out on
the porch and told him what I had done with the clothes, and he nearly
collapsed. He was very angry, and drove off, saying, "You come to the
office and get what's due you in the morning." I went the next morning,
got my money, and bade him good-by. That was the last of my becoming one
of the great engineers of the day.

I was glad, and I went back to school determined to study real hard, and
I did remain in school for a year. Then the old craze for work came on
me again. Father had died in the meantime, and mother was left to do the
best she could, and I got a job with the determination to be a help to
her.

AT WORK AGAIN

I got a position as office boy at 40 Broadway, then one of New York's
largest buildings. T