I was famous as a trader.

I was notorious as a miser.

I could even make a junkman weep when I had dealings with him.

Other boys called me in to sell for them their collections of bottles, rags, old iron, grain, and gunny-sacks, and five-gallon oil-cans--aye, and gave me a commission for doing it.
And this was the thrifty, close-fisted boy, accustomed to slave at a machine for ten cents an hour, who sat on the stringer-piece and considered the matter of beer at five cents a glass and gone in a moment with nothing to show for it.

I was now with men I admired.