It is Bob who stands
by and watches with me then, as on that night.
The assignment that fell to my lot when the book was made out,
the first against which my name was written in a New York editor's
book, was a lunch of some sort at the Astor House. I have forgotten
what was the special occasion. I remember the bearskin hats of the
Old Guard in it, but little else. In a kind of haze, I beheld half
the savory viands of earth spread under the eyes and nostrils of a
man who had not tasted food for the third day. I did not ask for
any. I had reached that stage of starvation that is like the still
centre of a cyclone, when no hunger is felt. But it may be that a
touch of it all crept into my report; for when the editor had read
it, he said briefly:--
"You will do. Take that desk, and report at ten every morning,
sharp."
That night, when I was dismissed from the office, I went up the
Bowery to No. 185, where a Danish family kept a boarding-house up
under the roof. I had work and wages now, and could pay. On the
stairs I fell in a swoon and lay there till some one stumbled over
me in the dark and carried me in.
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