Then I played the same game in a tailor-shop for rags and in a hardware store for some polishing-paste. The stock cost fifteen cents--on credit. There used to be a big dry-goods store on the east side of Chatham Square. It had two immense brass signs. "Nawthin' doin'," said the man, when I applied for the job of cleaning them. Nevertheless, I cleaned and polished a square foot of one big sign. The boss looked at it, and then at Tim and me. "I'll clean both for a dime," I said. "Well, go ahead," he said. The Cleaning Company went from store to store until we had enough money for our bills, a meal, and a surplus in the treasury. As we sat down to dinner at "Beefsteak John's," I handed Tim the surplus, and rather impatiently probed for his acknowledgment of my victory. I had made good, and wanted all that was due me. "What do you think of it, Tim?" I asked, with an air of satisfaction and confidence. "Shure, ye're a janyus, yer Honor; no doubt av that at all, at all; but----" "Go on!" I said. "I was jist switherin', yer Honor, what a wontherful thing ut is that a man kin always hev worruk whin he invints ut!" "Well, that's worth knowing," I said disappointedly. "Did you learn anything else?" "Well, it takes to do that thrick what most av us hevn't got; ut takes brains, sor--ut takes brains!" "Why don't you have brains, then?" He looked dumbly at me, and hung his head. "I dunno--I dunno," he muttered. The men at the Bismarck needed no urging to attend the meeting the following Sunday. Grogan had told his story; they were anxious to hear mine. The room was crowded to suffocation. They stood on the benches; they sat on the window-sills--everywhere; from all directions, the eyes of that dull, heavy human mass were penetrating me. I was frank and explicit in my analysis of the experiment. I had no idea that Grogan would speak, but he did, and his speech was pointed. "Whin ye talk religion, mister," he said, "ye're O.K.; but whin ye say we're lazy hobos, all av us, ye're spakin' round the rim av yer hat!" Grogan made the crowd laugh when he told them how I had been turned away from shops and factories. "Some av us poor divils hev done that same," he said, "fur weeks--until, begobs, we wisht we wur dead or hung or anythin'!" I was about to close the meeting, when an old man known as "Judge" shuffled out to the front and asked permission to speak. He was a man of education whom I had not hitherto been able to engage in conversation. The Judge administered a scathing rebuke, closing with a touch of humor, which was lost on the crowd. I stood there in the midst of a handful of friends, who mingled their pity with indignation. I took what belonged to me, and thanked the old man. The experiment exploded some of my theories and sent me to the school of facts. _Graf von "Habenichts"_