bout suddenly and say yes to the proposal made him. There was on
him the pressure of necessity, of his own better nature acting under
a sense of his wife's approval; and besides, there was a novelty that
attracted him in trying something absolutely new to his habits.

But it was one thing to begin, and another, with a man of his
temperament, to continue. To have regular hours, to attend to the
details of a traffic that was to the last degree prosaic, in short, to
settle down to hard work, was a very different thing from the "business"
about which Jack and his fellows at the club used to talk so much, and
to fancy they were engaged in. When the news came to the Union that
Delancy had gone into the house of Fletcher & Co. as a clerk, there was
a general smile, and a languid curiosity expressed as to how long he
would stick to it.

In the first day or two Jack was sustained not only by the original
impulse, but by a real instinct in learning about business ways and
details that were new to him. To talk about the business and about the
markets, to hear plans unfolded for extension and for taking advantage
of fluctuations in prices, was all very well; but the drudgery of
details--copying, comparing invoices, and settling into the routine of a
clerk's life, even the life of a confidential clerk--was contrary to the
habits of his whole life. It was not to be expected that these habits
would be overcome without a long struggle and many back-slidings.

The little matter of being at his office desk at nine o'clock in the
morning began to seem a hardship after the first three or four days. For
Mr. Fletcher not to walk into his shop on the stroke of ten would have
been such a reversal of his habits as to cause him as much annoyance as
it caused Jack to be bound to a fixed hour. It was only the difference
in training. But that is saying everything.

Besides, while the details of his work, the more he got settled in them,
were not to his taste, he was daily mortified to find himself ignorant
of matters which the stupidest clerk in the office seemed to know by
instinct. This acted, however, as a sort of stimulus, and touched his
pride. He determined that he would not be humiliated in this way, and
during office hours he worked as diligently as Mr. Fletcher could have
desired. He had pledged himself to the trial, and he summoned all his
intelligence to back his effort.

And it is true that the satisfaction of having a situation, of