Jake, the third hired man, was boss in the absence of the owner. He had long been in Mr. Holden’s employ, and had a wife and several children in a home of his own somewhere in the outskirts of the city. All the feeding, and cleaning, and currying, and carriage-washing, fell to Ed and me, while Jake, in addition to a general superintendence, had as his special trust the care of all the harnesses. He took great pride in them, and certainly kept them in admirable condition. Ed was chief carriage-washer and next in command under Jake, while to me, when my regular work was done, fell the odd jobs of keeping the carriages oiled, and watering the horses at the proper hours, and lending a hand at the unloading of the hay and feed as they came in--of holding myself in readiness, in short, to do anything that anyone in the stable asked of me. A very good position it was, as I very soon found. I had no great difficulty in learning the various tasks, and in a stable which, even in the fierce heat of August, was always comfortable, and at forms of work which were always interesting, and with every cost of living provided for, I was clearing five dollars a week. By no means were the demands of our work continuous. Nearly every afternoon we had an hour or two or even three together, when there was little to be done. I found a book-shop across the way from the stable, where second-hand books could be rented at the rate of six cents a week and the books exchanged as often as you pleased. Then in the evenings, when we all had supped in turn, and the stalls had been made ready for the night, and the traps sent out in answer to the evening trade, Jake and Ed and I used to sit out in front, within easy hearing of the telephone-bell, with our chairs tilted against the stable-wall and our feet caught by the heels on the chair-rounds, and there we talked by the hour together, until Jake went home and left Ed and me to care for the outstanding horses and traps, and lock up the stable for the night. I was at a disadvantage in these conversations. Jake and Ed were Yankees, both of them shrewd, hard-headed, steady fellows. Jake was the father of a family, and Ed an unmarried man of three-and-thirty, who was working with all his might to pay off the mortgage on his father’s farm back in Illinois. Both of them had had some district-school training, but nothing beyond, and while they had a perfectly intelligent knowledge of affairs which concerned them as men and as citizens, their farther intellectual horizon was limited.