The sense of futility was strong upon me. Never before had the temptation to abandon the attempt assailed me with such force. It was no clean-cut, definite resolution that won in favor of continued effort. Not at all. I think that when I turned away I was more than half-resolved to give over the experiment. But even as a man, who, contemplating suicide, allows himself to be borne upon the aimless stream of common events past the point of many an early resolution to the deed, so I found myself gradually awaking to the thought, “Ah, well, I will try it a little longer.” It was in this mood that I went to find Clark at our rendezvous. Our eyes met in quick inquiry, and before either of us spoke, we knew each the other’s story. But Clark wished the confirmation of actual confession. “Ain’t you had no luck too?” he whispered, his eyes close to mine, and contracting with a sense of the incredibility of such a result, which might be altered, if one would only insist strongly enough upon its being other than it actually was. “No,” I said, “I’ve had no luck, nor anything to eat since morning.” We were speaking in the low tones which were permitted in the reading-room. “Well, I’ll be ----.” And Clark’s drawling oath seemed exactly suited to the absurdity of the situation. We both laughed softly over our coincident dilemma, and by a mutual impulse we walked out into the street, where we spent an agreeable half-hour in discussing the placards in the windows of two restaurants. There was an especial attraction for us in the lower window where there stood a _chef_ all white from his spotless cap to where his white garments were lost to view behind a gas-stove of ingenious contrivance, on whose clean, polished upper surface he was turning well-browned griddle-cakes. I do not know what the association was, and it was in entire good-humor that Clark suddenly turned to me with the remark: “Say, partner, we’d get all we want to eat, if we’d heave a rock through this window.” CHAPTER III FINDING STEADY WORK No. -- BLUE ISLAND AVENUE, CHICAGO, ILL., December 22, 1891.