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In the evening, when other could sit by the lamp or study their lessons, we two boys went out with a basket and picked up wood and coal in the neighboring lots, or went after the dozen or so pieces of coal left from the ton of coal put in that afternoon by one of our neighbors, with the spot hungrily fixed in mind by one of us during the day, hoping that the man who carried in the coal might not be too careful in picking up the stray lumps!

“An experience that you know not of”! Don’t I?

At ten years of age I got my first job: washing the windows of a baker’s shop at fifty cents a week. In a week or two I was allowed to sell bread and cakes behind the counter after school hours for a dollar a week – handing out freshly baked cakes and warm, delicious smelling bread, when scarcely a crumb had passed my mouth that day!

Then on Saturday mornings I served a route for a weekly paper, and sold my remaining stock on the street. It meant from sixty to seventy cents for that day’s work.

I lived in Brooklyn, New York, and the chief means of transportation to Coney Island at that time was the horse car. Near where we lived the cars would stop to water the horses, the men would jump out and get a drink of water, but the women had no means of quenching their thirst. Seeing this lack I got a pail, filled it with water and a bit of ice, and, with a glass, jumped on each car on Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday, and sold my wares at a cent a glass. And when competition came, as it did very quickly when other boys saw that a Sunday’s work meant two or three dollars, I squeezed a lemon or two in my pail, my liquid became “lemonade” and my price two cents a glass, and Sundays meant five dollars to me.