But John Henry Overholt was a man, and an honest one.  He went straight to the writing-table in the next room and sat down, and though his hand shook, he wrote a clear and manly letter to the President of the College where he had taught so well, stating his exact position, acknowledging the failure of his invention, and asking help to find immediate employment as a teacher, even in the humblest capacity which would afford bread for his boy and himself.  Presidents and principals of colleges are in constant communication with other similar institutions, and generally know of vacant positions.

When he had written his letter and read it over carefully, Overholt looked at his timetable, got his hat, coat, and umbrella, and trudged off through the slushy snow to the station, on his way to New York.

It was raining there, but it was not dismal; hurry, confusion, and noise can never be that.  He had not been in the city since the day when he made his last attempt to raise money, and in his present state the contrast was overwhelming.  The shopkeepers would have told him that it was a dull day for business, and that the rain was costing them hundreds of dollars every hour, because there are a vast number of people who buy things within the month before Christmas, if it is convenient and the weather is fine, but will not take the trouble if the weather is bad; and afterwards they are so glad to have saved their money that they buy nothing of that sort till the following year.  For Christmas shopping is largely a matter of temptation on the one side and of weakness on the other, and you cannot tempt a man to buy your wares if he will not even go out and look at your shop window.  At Christmas time every shopkeeper turns into a Serpent, with a big S and a supply of apples varying, with his capital, from a paper-bagful to a whole orchard, and though the ladies are the more easily tempted, nine generous men out of ten show no more sense just at that time than Eve herself did.  The very air has temptation in it when they see the windows full of pretty things and think of their wives and their children and their old friends.  Even misers relax a little then, and a famous statesman, who was somewhat close-fisted in his day, is reported to have given his young coloured servant twenty-five cents on Christmas Eve, telling him to go out to Mount Auburn Cemetery and see where the great men of New England lie buried.  And the man, I believe, went there; but he was an African, and the spirit of Christmas was not in his race, for if it had moved him he would have wasted that money on cream-cakes and cookies, reflecting that the buried worthies of Massachusetts could not tell tales on him.

Overholt went down town to the bank where he kept his account and explained his little mistake very humbly, and asked for time to pay up.  The teller looked at him as if he were an escaped lunatic, but on account of his great reputation as an inventor he was shown to the desk of one of the partners, which stood in a corner of the vast place, where one could converse confidentially if one did not speak above a whisper; but the stenographer girl could hear even whispering distinctly, and perhaps she sometimes took down what she heard, if the partner made a signal to her by carelessly rolling his pencil across his table.