Not in a thousand years would I be likely to forget the night when it came.  It had rained all day, a cold October storm, and night found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged.  I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home.  How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the ‘castle,’ with its refined ways, between her, in her dainty girlhood, and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was slowly stealing away my senses with my courage.  There was warmth and cheer where she was.  Here an overpowering sense of desolation came upon me.  I hitched a little nearer to the edge.  What if——?  Would they miss me much or long at home if no word came from me?  Perhaps they might never hear.  What was the use of keeping it up any longer, with, God help us, everything against, and nothing to back, a lonely lad?...

It was not only breakfast we lacked.  The day before we had had only a crust together.  Two days without food is not good preparation for a day’s canvassing.  We did the best we could.  Bob stood by and wagged his tail persuasively while I did the talking; but luck was dead against us, and ‘Hard Times’ stuck to us for all we tried.  Evening came and found us down by the Cooper Institute, with never a cent.  Faint with hunger, I sat down on the steps under the illuminated clock, while Bob stretched himself at my feet.  He had beguiled the cook in one of the last houses we called at, and his stomach was filled.  From the corner I had looked on enviously.  For me there was no supper, as there had been no dinner and no breakfast.  To-morrow there was another day of starvation.  How long was this to last?  Was it any use to keep up a struggle so hopeless?  From this very spot I had gone, hungry and wrathful, three years before when the dining Frenchmen for whom I wanted to fight thrust me forth from their company.  Three wasted years!  Then I had one cent in my pocket, I remembered.  To-day I had not even so much.  I was bankrupt in hope and purpose.  Nothing had gone right; and worse, I did not care.  I drummed moodily upon my book.  Wasted!  Yes, that was right.  My life was wasted, utterly wasted.

A voice hailed me by name, and Bob sat up, looking attentively at me for his cue as to the treatment of the owner of it.  I recognized in him the principal of the telegraph school where I had gone until my money gave out.  He seemed suddenly struck by something.

[Illustration:  Photo by Marceau, N.Y.  FIG. 9.  Richard Mansfield, Actor-Manager.  A fine, balanced combination of artistic talent, creative power, and capacity for great emotion, with good judgment, financial sense, great energy, great determination, uncompromising devotion to ideals, fine powers of expression, and executive ability of the driving, compelling, rigid type.  Note high head, domed above temples and wide across center of forehead; large nose; long, straight upper lip; firm mouth; prominent chin; long line from point of chin to crown of head; intense expression.]