"Then things got worse. My father took to drinking hard, and we had
mighty little to eat. I chored around, doing odd things in the village. I
have often wondered that people didn't see the stuff that was in me, and
give me a chance. They didn't, though. As for my relatives: one was a
harness-maker. He sent me out in the dead of winter to post bills for
miles about, and gave me ten cents for it. Didn't even give me a meal.
Twenty years after he came to me and wanted to borrow a hundred dollars.
I gave him five hundred on condition that he'd not come near me for the
rest of his natural life.
"The next thing I did was to leave home--'run away,' I suppose, is the
way to put it. I got to Boston, and went for a cabin-boy on a steamer;
travelled down to Panama, and from there to Brazil. At Brazil I got on
another ship, and came round to San Francisco. I got into trouble in San
Francisco with the chief mate of the Flying Polly, because I tried to
teach him his business. One of the first things I learned in life was not
to interfere with people who had a trade and didn't understand it. In San
Francisco I got out of the situation. I took to selling newspapers in the
streets.
"There wasn't enough money in it. I went for a cabin-boy again, and
travelled to Australia. There, once more, I resigned my position, chiefly
because I wouldn't cheerfully let the Mate bang me about the
quarter-deck.
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