Actually and in appearance he was about my age, while in his manner he was a bashful boy of seventeen. It was impossible for him to talk without blushing and appearing extremely embarrassed. As I had only met him socially, this phase was a revelation to me. I tried to get him out amongst the trade, thinking that after he had become well acquainted his embarrassment would be overcome, or at least partially so. My efforts in this direction failed and he settled down to a routine office-man, and while he looked after that end of the business satisfactorily, I could easily have found a clerk at fifteen dollars per week to do as well. This was disappointing, but I hoped that as he gained experience his services would be of greater value to the firm. Meanwhile, I let him relieve me entirely of the office work. Tom had been with me only a few months when he came to me for advice in a matter in which he felt he had become involved. It appeared he had been calling regularly on a young lady, a pretty little French girl. I had met her but once and then was impressed with the idea that she had a temper which it would be unpleasant to arouse, though I may have done her an injustice. At all events, Tom said he thought the girl was in love with him; that probably he had given her reason to believe his attentions were serious, and he saw no honorable way out except to ask her to be his wife. I saw that the boy, so he seemed to me, was really very much disturbed. I told him before I could offer any advice I must know every detail, and after learning that not one word of love had ever passed between them, that their intercourse was really nothing more than that of intimate friends, and he assuring me that he had not a particle of love for the girl, I advised him strongly to give up any idea of offering her marriage and to gently but firmly break off the intimacy. He accepted the advice gratefully and acted on it. A few years later he married the girl, and I presume that he told her of my share in this matter. She probably held me responsible and no doubt influenced him to some extent in a course of action, referred to farther on in this narrative, that I have always regarded with regret. It is a thankless task to advise one in such matters, even though the one be your friend. Business continued to improve slowly, but at the end of the year my partner had drawn as his share of the profits, for the eight months he had been with me, twenty-two hundred dollars. He was more than satisfied, and well he might be. During the winter of 1874 and '75 I had another and more trying siege of rheumatism. As in the previous spring, with the advent of warmer weather I found relief, but I knew the disease had become chronic and it worried me. This worry, however, I soon dismissed from my mind to make room for one more formidable and pressing. Hard times were coming again and there were two now to divide the profits.