Then one day a woman to whom he was delivering a parcel at her home in Warren Avenue, stopped him long enough to ask: "What do you drivers get a week for your work?"
"I get ten dollars," said Eugene. "I think some get more."
"You ought to make a good collector," she went on. She was a large, homely5, incisive6, straight-talking woman. "Would you like to change to that kind of work?"
Eugene was sick of the laundry business. The hours were killing7. He had worked as late as one o'clock Sunday morning.
"I think I would," he exclaimed. "I don't know anything about it, but this work is no fun."
"My husband is the manager of The People's Furniture Company," she went on. "He needs a good collector now and then. I think he's going to make a change very soon. I'll speak to him."
Eugene smiled joyously8 and thanked her. This was surely a windfall. He was anxious to know what collectors were paid but he thought it scarcely tactful to ask.
"If he gives you a job you will probably get fourteen dollars to begin with," she volunteered.
Eugene thrilled. That would be really a rise in the world. Four dollars more! He could get some nice clothes out of that and have spending money besides. He might get a chance to study art. His visions began to multiply. One could get up in the world by trying. The energetic delivery he had done for this laundry had brought him this. Further effort in the other field might bring him more. And he was young yet.
He had been working for the laundry company for six months. Six weeks later, Mr. Henry Mitchly, manager of the People's Furniture, wrote him care of the laundry company to call at his home any evening after eight and he would see him. "My wife has spoken to me of you," he added.
Eugene complied the same day that he received the note, and was looked over by a lean, brisk, unctuous9 looking man of forty, who asked him various questions as to his work, his home, how much money he took in as a driver, and what not. Finally he said, "I need a bright young man down at my place. It's a good job for one who is steady and honest and hardworking. My wife seems to think you work pretty well, so I'm willing to give you a trial. I can put you to work at fourteen dollars. I want you to come to see me a week from Monday."
Eugene thanked him. He decided10, on Mr. Mitchly's advice, to give his laundry manager a full week's notice. He told Margaret that he was leaving and she was apparently11 glad for his sake. The management was slightly sorry, for Eugene was a good driver. During his last week he helped break in a new man in his place, and on Monday appeared before Mr. Mitchly.
Mr. Mitchly was glad to have him, for he had seen him as a young man of energy and force. He explained the simple nature of the work, which was to take bills for clocks, silverware, rugs, anything which the company sold, and go over the various routes collecting the money due,—which would average from seventy five to a hundred and twenty-five dollars a day. "Most companies in our line require a bond," he explained, "but we haven't come to that yet. I think I know honest young men when I see them. Anyhow we have a system of inspection12. If a man's inclined to be dishonest he can't get very far with us."
Eugene had never thought of this question of honesty very much. He had been raised where he did not need to worry about the matter of a little pocket change, and he had made enough at the Appeal to supply his immediate13 wants. Besides, among the people he had always associated with it was considered a very right and necessary thing to be honest. Men were arrested for not being. He remembered one very sad case of a boy he knew being arrested at Alexandria for breaking into a store at night. That seemed a terrible thing to him at the time. Since then he had been speculating a great deal, in a vague way as to what honesty was, but he had not yet decided. He knew that it was expected of him to account for the last penny of anything that was placed in his keeping and he was perfectly14 willing to do so. The money he earned seemed enough if he had to live on it. There was no need for him to aid in supporting anyone else. So he slipped along rather easily and practically untested.
Eugene took the first day's package of bills as laid out for him, and carefully went from door to door. In some places money was paid him for which he gave a receipt, in others he was put off or refused because of previous difficulties with the company. In a number of places people had moved, leaving no trace of themselves, and packing the unpaid15 for goods with them. It was his business, as Mr. Mitchly explained, to try to get track of them from the neighbors.
Eugene saw at once that he was going to like the work. The fresh air, the out-door life, the walking, the quickness with which his task was accomplished16, all pleased him. His routes took him into strange and new parts of the city, where he had never been before, and introduced him to types he had never met. His laundry work, taking him from door to door, had been a freshening influence, and this was another. He saw scenes that he felt sure he could, when he had learned to draw a little better, make great things of,—dark, towering factory-sites, great stretches of railroad yards laid out like a puzzle in rain, snow, or bright sunlight; great smoke-stacks throwing their black heights athwart morning or evening skies. He liked them best in the late afternoon when they stood out in a glow of red or fading purple. "Wonderful," he used to exclaim to himself, and think how the world would marvel17 if he could ever come to do great pictures like those of Doré. He admired the man's tremendous imagination. He never thought of himself as doing anything in oils or water colors or chalk—only pen and ink, and that in great, rude splotches of black and white. That was the way. That was the way force was had.
But he could not do them. He could only think them.
One of his chief joys was the Chicago river, its black, mucky water churned by puffing18 tugs19 and its banks lined by great red grain elevators and black coal chutes and yellow lumber20 yards. Here was real color and life—the thing to draw; and then there were the low, drab, rain-soaked cottages standing21 in lonely, shabby little rows out on flat prairie land, perhaps a scrubby tree somewhere near. He loved these. He would take an envelope and try to get the sense of them—the feel, as he called it—but it wouldn't come. All he did seemed cheap and commonplace, mere22 pointless lines and stiff wooden masses. How did the great artists get their smoothness and ease? He wondered.
点击收听单词发音
1 victorious | |
adj.胜利的,得胜的 | |
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2 mightily | |
ad.强烈地;非常地 | |
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3 personalities | |
n. 诽谤,(对某人容貌、性格等所进行的)人身攻击; 人身攻击;人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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4 strutted | |
趾高气扬地走,高视阔步( strut的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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5 homely | |
adj.家常的,简朴的;不漂亮的 | |
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6 incisive | |
adj.敏锐的,机敏的,锋利的,切入的 | |
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7 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
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8 joyously | |
ad.快乐地, 高兴地 | |
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9 unctuous | |
adj.油腔滑调的,大胆的 | |
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10 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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11 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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12 inspection | |
n.检查,审查,检阅 | |
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13 immediate | |
adj.立即的;直接的,最接近的;紧靠的 | |
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14 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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15 unpaid | |
adj.未付款的,无报酬的 | |
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16 accomplished | |
adj.有才艺的;有造诣的;达到了的 | |
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17 marvel | |
vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异;n.令人惊异的事 | |
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18 puffing | |
v.使喷出( puff的现在分词 );喷着汽(或烟)移动;吹嘘;吹捧 | |
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19 tugs | |
n.猛拉( tug的名词复数 );猛拖;拖船v.用力拉,使劲拉,猛扯( tug的第三人称单数 ) | |
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20 lumber | |
n.木材,木料;v.以破旧东西堆满;伐木;笨重移动 | |
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21 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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22 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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