“Now, Loudon,” Pinkerton had said, the morning after the lecture, “now Loudon, we can go at it shoulder to shoulder.  This is what I have longed for:  I wanted two heads and four arms; and now I have ’em.  You’ll find it’s just the same as art—­all observation and imagination; only more movement.  Just wait till you begin to feel the charm!”

I might have waited long.  Perhaps I lack a sense; for our whole existence seemed to me one dreary bustle, and the place we bustled in fitly to be called the Place of Yawning.  I slept in a little den behind the office; Pinkerton, in the office itself, stretched on a patent sofa which sometimes collapsed, his slumbers still further menaced by an imminent clock with an alarm.  Roused by this diabolical contrivance, we rose early, went forth early to breakfast, and returned by nine to what Pinkerton called work, and I distraction.  Masses of letters must be opened, read, and answered; some by me at a subsidiary desk which had been introduced on the morning of my arrival; others by my bright-eyed friend, pacing the room like a caged lion as he dictated to the tinkling type-writers.  Masses of wet proof had to be overhauled and scrawled upon with a blue pencil—­“rustic”—­“six-inch caps”—­“bold spacing here”—­or sometimes terms more fervid, as for instance this, which I remember Pinkerton to have spirted on the margin of an advertisement of Soothing Syrup:  “Throw this all down.  Have you never printed an advertisement?  I’ll be round in half an hour.”  The ledger and sale-book, besides, we had always with us.  Such was the backbone of our occupation, and tolerable enough; but the far greater proportion of our time was consumed by visitors, whole-souled, grand fellows no doubt, and as sharp as a needle, but to me unfortunately not diverting.  Some were apparently half-witted, and must be talked over by the hour before they could reach the humblest decision, which they only left the office to return again (ten minutes later) and rescind.  Others came with a vast show of hurry and despatch, but I observed it to be principally show.  The agricultural model for instance, which was practicable, proved a kind of flypaper for these busybodies.  I have seen them blankly turn the crank of it for five minutes at a time, simulating (to nobody’s deception) business interest:  “Good thing this, Pinkerton?  Sell much of it?  Ha!  Couldn’t use it, I suppose, as a medium of advertisement for my article?”—­which was perhaps toilet soap.  Others (a still worse variety) carried us to neighbouring saloons to dice for cocktails and (after the cocktails were paid) for dollars on a corner of the counter.  The attraction of dice for all these people was indeed extraordinary:  at a certain club, where I once dined in the character of “my partner, Mr. Dodd,” the dice-box came on the table with the wine, an artless substitute for after-dinner wit.