up,
and accustomed to decent living, can keep himself going. For the first
year, if he is well stocked with clothes, he could perhaps, with a
little assistance from home, manage to scrape along on seven or even
six, but such an experience would be pleasanter to look back on than to
pass through.

Boys beginning at the beginning in large commercial houses generally get
about three or four dollars a week if they are in the stock, and from
five to seven dollars if they are in the office. But a boy who goes into
the stock and learns it, and how to sell it to customers, has acquired a
knowledge of a business, while a boy who goes into the office learns how
to become a book-keeper only. For this reason a knowledge of some sort
of stock is very valuable to the boy from the country. If he can go into
a business house and make himself immediately useful, instead of merely
helping around while he is learning about the goods that the house deals
in, he may be able to earn enough at the start to support himself.

It is the office, however, which is very apt to capture the country boy,
because it offers wages on which a boy can at least sustain life. Almost
any boy who has worked in a country store has picked up some knowledge
of book-keeping, and book-keeping is taught theoretically in many
high-schools, as well as in the countless business "colleges" of the
country. It is not difficult, therefore, for a boy to obtain sufficient
knowledge of its rudiments to be able to take the first position above
that of office-boy. To fill such a place, however, he must be bright,
neat, prompt, attentive, write a good hand, and be quick at figures.
Though a boy may fill the bill in all these particulars, and not be
able to find work at once, he will succeed in the end, keep his place
when he gets it, and win promotion. He will look through the
advertisements for help wanted in the daily papers, and answer all such
as seem to come from good houses.

He must, however, beware of a too common kind of swindler--the
smooth-tongued man who offers to get a boy a place for a money
consideration. He usually works in with a partner who runs a mythical
business, and engages the victim at an unexpectedly large salary. The
happy boy pays over all his savings to the agent, and suddenly finds
himself discharged on some trumped-up charge, or comes down-town next
day to find the office locked and employer and "business" flown.
Sometimes this game is worked by