I soon found opportunity to run down to the corner of the street and tell my father that it was all right, and to go home and tell mother that I had got the situation.
[Illustration: DAVID McCARGO] And that is how in 1850 I got my first real start in life.

From the dark cellar running a steam-engine at two dollars a week, begrimed with coal dirt, without a trace of the elevating influences of life, I was lifted into paradise, yes, heaven, as it seemed to me, with newspapers, pens, pencils, and sunshine about me.

There was scarcely a minute in which I could not learn something or find out how much there was to learn and how little I knew.

I felt that my foot was upon the ladder and that I was bound to climb.
I had only one fear, and that was that I could not learn quickly enough the addresses of the various business houses to which messages had to be delivered.

I therefore began to note the signs of these houses up one side of the street and down the other.