now, suddenly, he was none of these things. Adolescence was completing its brilliant transformation act; it was delivering a gawky youth into the arms of glowing, symmetrical young manhood.
It was in this period that George first began to play at salesmanship as if it were some stirring piece of drama.
One day his customers noted, over and above the stock of newspapers and magazines, a shelf of bound books—cheap reprints of best sellers, they were, yet they gave the whole place dignity from George's point of view. Gradually a modest line of new fiction was added, and young Judson was gathering a finer and a finer clientele and supplying a larger and larger stock to meet its requirements.
Yet such successes only whetted the youth's ambition. Among the books that now got on his shelves was a volume called "Self Help," by Samuel Smiles. George found this book full of recitals of how poor boys had won successes, how struggling young men had become artists or sculptors or successful manufacturers or business men. He pored over its pages. He gloated over its heroes. The book became his Bible. And there was a magazine called "Success" that came monthly to his stand, which devoted itself to inspiring men and women of all classes to better their conditions. On this George used to feed
