"Do you know what I caught that young fellow doing during noon hour?" he asked. "Reading up the encyclopaedia on tea. Tea, mind you. Said he made a practice of reading up on the stuff we are handling. _We_, mind you. Found it very interesting to know where it came from, and all about it. I've been in the grocery business for pretty close to forty years, and I've seen many an employee spend his noon hour in the pool rooms, or in some other little back room, or just smoking, but this is the first one I ever caught reading up the business in an encyclopaedia. Never read it that way myself. Well--you watch him. I'd risk a ten-spot that he knows more about tea this minute than half of our travellers." But Dave was not to continue in the grocery trade, despite his reading of the encyclopaedia, A few evenings later he was engaged in reading in the public library; not an encyclopaedia, but Shakespeare. The encyclopaedia was for such time as he could save from business hours, but for his evening reading Mr. Duncan had directed him into the realm of fiction and poetry, and he was now feeling his way through Hamlet. From the loneliness of his boyhood he had developed the habit of talking aloud to himself, and in abstracted moments he read in an audible whisper which impressed the substance more deeply on his mind, but made him unpopular in the public reading rooms. It was well known among the patrons of the rooms that he read Hamlet. This fact, however, may not have been altogether to Dave's disadvantage. On the evening in question an elderly man engaged him in conversation. "You are a Shakespearean student, I see?" "Not exactly. I read a little in the evenings. But I haven't gone far enough to call myself a student." "I have seen you here different times. Are you well acquainted with the town?" "Pretty well," said Dave, scenting that there might be a purpose in the questioning. "Working now?" Dave told him where he was employed. "I am the editor of _The Call_," said the elderly man. "We need another man on the street; a reporter, you know. We pay twenty-five dollars a week for such a position. If you are interested you might call at the office tomorrow." Dave hurried with his problem to Mr. Duncan. "I think I'd like the work," he said, "but I am not sure whether I can do it. My writing is rather--wonderful." Mr. Duncan turned the matter over in his mind. "Yes," he said at length, "but I notice you are beginning to use the typewriter. When you learn that God gave you ten fingers, not two, you may make a typist. And there is nothing more worth while than being able to express yourself in English. They'll teach you that on a newspaper. I think I'd take it.