One of these waifs would start out in the mornlno;
and visit all the law offices ; then he would hang
around the courts and public offices ; or he would go
from shop to shop begging a situation. Only give
him something- to do, soniethino; on which to feed the
fire of his ambition, and no matter how hard the
work or how small the pay he would gladly under-
take it. Give him a trial; he was apt and honest,
and he must soon have work or starve. Day after
day, from morning till night, and every day for weeks
and months, with heart in liis throat, and big shame-
faced tears now and then slipping out from under his
eye-lashes, his very soul sinking within him, he would
make his mournful rounds. All was life and bustle,
and merry money-making; fortune's favorites jostled
him as they hurried past ; only he with stifled long-
ings was doomed to walk the streets like a beggar
and an outcast. Yet not alone, for there were hun-
dreds of others like him, every steamer emptjdng out a
fresh supply, and the merchants could not furnish places
for twenty applicants a day. Often a hundred of
these sad earnest faces mio-ht have been seen stand-
ing at one time, at seven o'clock in the morning, be-
fore a store waiting for the door to open in order to
answer an advertisement for a bookkeeper. At
leno-th heart-sick and diso-usted they would scatter
off, some finally to do the work of porter or day-
laborer, or to drive a cart or milk- wagon, or to work
on a farm ; others, and by far the larger number, go-
ins; to the mines. There the wanderer, standinsf in
the cold runnino; snow-stream of the Sierra, workinsf
in the river-beds or on the canon-side until his limbs
are numb and sharp rheumatic pains shoot through
his shoulders, at night tossing in sleepless unrest on
his hard bed, or gazing in heartful self-pity on the
stars thinking of home, with crushed enthusiasm frets
his days and nights away, at morning wishing it were
night and at night wishing the morning were come,
broodino- over his lost estate and the unrewarded
