Now, I had no letters of introduction and nothing to recommend me except a certain degree of maturity and a cultivated manner of speaking, and I might and probably should have been trying to this day to break into some sedate and high-toned old-fogy office had it not been for one of those accidents with which my career has been replete.
I had visited all the firms on my list without finding any who wanted to take in a student.

Indeed all the offices seemed filled if not crowded with studious-looking young men whose noses were buried in law books.

In one or two, to be sure, I might have secured admittance and been given desk room in exchange for the services of my legs as a runner of errands and a server of papers, but none had any idea of paying anything.

The profession at the bottom was more overcrowded than the gallery of the Academy of Music when they ran Rosedale.

Each night as I returned to my lodgings I felt more and more discouraged.