At Panama we were crowded into a small steamer designed for about 400 passengers, but nearly 1,000 were crammed into it. Conditions in the steerage were appalling. Besides, the ship was under-provisioned and we soon ran short of anything like vegetables and fruit. The purser had thriftily laid in a large private supply of oranges and bananas for sale in San Francisco. These he had divided into two caches. The hungry mob seized on one of them, located between decks, in the night, and cleaned it up to the uttermost peel. The purser knew only too well that the next night would witness the disappearance of the balance of his property. He was in despair. An inspiration seized me. “How much will you take cash for the lot?” I asked him. “Give me $10 for them and it’s a bargain,” he answered. I fished out that lonesome $5 piece, paid it on account and made some vague excuse about getting the other five from my bunk. I was given permission also to hold a fruit auction sale on the upper deck. Being a fruit peddler shocked my southern ideas of a gentleman’s employment. Nothing but downright poverty could have driven me to it. However, I took the edge off the thing as far as possible by employing an itinerant gambler, also dead broke, to act as general salesman and orator while I took in the cash. He had a voice like a fog horn and the gall of a highwayman. He cried our wares with such success that in a few minutes the whole ship’s company was engaged in mad competition to buy oranges and bananas at five for a half. It would have been just the same if I had made the price five for a dollar. Money rolled in faster than I could count it. I could see that my chief of staff was “knocking down” on me in a shameless way, but I didn’t have time to check his activities--in fact, I didn’t care. In a little over an hour, the last orange and banana had vanished. I settled accounts with the purser and counted my capital. I had a little over $400 to the good, enough to make a decent start in California. I do not tell this incident because it is noteworthy in itself. Instances were then so common of needy gentlemen who extricated themselves from the financial bog by some shift which in other days they would have thought ignoble--almost disgraceful--that this event would not be worth recalling; but in the peculiar way that destiny is worked out, it had a decisive part in directing very important matters of the future. And it has been my observation that the most impressive movements in the lives of most of us have been determined more by chance than by a fixed purpose.