encouraging. The first salaried position I ever held was in a grocery store at Rockford. About the time I left that establishment it "busted." The failure was not due to the size of my salary; I received only three dollars a week!
My second engagement was with a Chicago wholesale grocery, where I was to receive $40 a week as bill clerk, with the understanding that I was to pitch for the Excelsiors during the Base Ball season. I was told by the proprietor not to mention the amount of my salary to fellow clerks. I hadn't been at work but a few days when a son of Frank Parmalee—of Chicago Transfer fame—who had his desk near mine, asked the leading question, "How much do you get?" I answered, "I don't know; my first pay day hasn't arrived." He told me that he got $10 a week, and I suppose he ranked me as about a " fiver." I only received one salary check at Chicago, when the sheriff came along and closed up the wholesale grocery store. I was not so sure of my innocence of the cause of this failure as I had been in the Rockford case. Forty dollars a week for such service as I was at that time capable of rendering seemed to me enough to "bust" almost any concern.
I was now without employment in a big city in mid-winter. Happily, I had an uncle in the insurance business at that time, and he gave me work, soliciting insurance. Among other policies that I wrote up was one on a blacksmith shop on Lake Street. I had become acquainted with the proprietor as I passed back and forth between my boarding place and office, and, upon my
