When I went up to West Walnut Hills and told them that I had found a real artist in Cincinnati, I was laughed at in a very pitying way; but later on, when this same Duveneck gave a showing of his work in Boston and was hailed as the “new American Velásquez,” I felt a great satisfaction, although I was no longer in Cincinnati and could not enjoy my triumph. After an experience as a casket maker’s assistant, where I was expected to board with him and sleep in the manufactory, and eventually—great stress was laid on this—become a partner in the business, I decided to accept an offer my cousins had made me to go farther west and become a clerk in a department store they had started in San Francisco. I had previously received a proposition to become a salesman of cheap jewelry, for, so this man told me, my line of talk would be a sure-fire success for making sales to “servant girls at the back door.” My ticket as far as Chicago was given me by Chap Dwight, who was connected with railways, and for the rest of the way I paid for a first-class fare and no Pullman—in those days it was possible to sit up in the smoker. This I did as far as Cheyenne, where my troubles began. I was told that the train would stop for an hour, so I alighted to take a look about the town and get some dinner. The only thing that aroused my interest was a sign marked “Simmons” over a doorway with steps leading down to it and quite evidently a dive. There were two baize doors above which shone bright lights, with reams of smoke rising above the heads of men. I went down and started to push open the door, but just at that moment loud voices were raised inside and something whizzed by my head. I looked up, and, not six inches from my outstretched hand was a clean bullethole through the door. I never opened it. Trying not to hurry, I made my way back to my train and started to get aboard, searching in every pocket for my ticket. It was gone. I begged clemency from the conductor and tried to make him remember that I had got on at Chicago, but I had no berth, and there were too many deadbeats trying to get to California in those days for him to have any pity whatsoever for me. In desperation, I spoke to the baggageman. He advised me to go as far as my money would take me and then telegraph home for more. Anything was better than being left at midnight in this city of careless bullets. Out to Rawlins, Wyoming, was as far as my pocketbook would take me, and I would have two dollars and fifty cents left for a bed and telegram.