Twenty dollars were all I possessed in the world; and this sum, at a hotel, would not last me, I knew, over two or three weeks.

I therefore sought out a private boarding-house, where, under an assumed name, I got a room and my board for two dollars a week.

The woman who kept the boarding-house, and to whom I communicated my wish to get sewing, gave me half a dozen plain shirts to make for her husband, for which I received fifty cents each.

This was all the work I obtained during the first two weeks I was in the house, and it yielded me only three dollars, when my boarding cost me four.

I felt a good deal discouraged after that.