me to do. I said to myself that I must begin to study for it without delay. But that was impossible, and it was quite some time before I took up the course which the presser's boy had laid out for me. During the first three months I literally had no time to open a book. Nor was that all.

My work as a cloak-maker had become a passion with me, so much so that even on Saturdays, when the shop was closed, I would scarcely do any reading.

Instead, I would seek the society of other cloak-makers with whom
I might talk shop
I was developing speed rather than skill at my sewing-machine, but this question of speed afforded exercise to my brain. It did not take me long to realize that the number of cloaks or jackets which one turned out in a given length of time was largely a matter of method and system. I perceived that Joe, who was accounted a fast hand, would take up the various parts of a garment in a certain order calculated to reduce to a minimum the amount of time lost in passing from section to section. So I watched him intently, studying his system with every fiber of my being. Nor did I content myself with imitating his processes. I was forever pondering the problem and introducing little improvements of my own. I was making a science of it. It was not merely physical exertion. It was a source of intellectual interest as well. I was wrapped up in it. If I happened to meet a cloak-operator who was noted for extraordinary speed I would feel like an ambitious musician meeting a famous virtuoso. Some cloak-operators were artists. I certainly was not one of them. I admired their work and envied them, but I lacked the artistic patience and the dexterity essential to workmanship of a high order. Much to my chagrin, I was a born bungler. But then I possessed physical strength, nervous vitality, method, and inventiveness—all the elements that go to make up speed

I was progressing with unusual rapidity. Joe criticized my work severely, often calling me botcher, but I knew that this was chiefly intended to veil his satisfaction at the growing profits that my work was yielding him

I now earned about ten dollars a week, of which I spent about five, saving the rest for the next season of idleness

At last that season set in. There was not a stroke of work in the shop. I was so absorbed in my new vocation that I would pass my evenings in a cloak-makers' haunt, a