He looked curiously at me for a moment, and said with an oath: 

“By—!  I’ve been on the Bowery a good many years and haven’t been sold once.  If you’re a skin-game man, I’ll throw up my job!”

I got the acid.  I played the same game in a tailor-shop for five cents’ worth of rags.  Then I went to a hardware store on the Square and got credit for about ten cents’ worth of brickdust and paste.  I took Tim by the arm and led him across the west side of Chatham Square.  There used to be a big drygoods store on the east side of the Square, with large plate-glass windows, and underneath the windows, big brass signs.

“Nothing doing,” said the floorwalker, as I asked for the job of cleaning them; nevertheless, when he turned his back, I dropped on my knees and cleaned a square foot—­did it inside of a minute.

“Say, boss,” I said, “look here!  I’m desperately hard up.  I want to make money, and I want to make it honestly.  I will clean that entire sign for a nickle.”

It was pity that moved him to give me the job, and when it was completed, I offered to do the other one.  “All right,” he said; “go ahead.”

“But this one,” I said, “will cost you a dime.”

“Why a nickle for this one and a dime for the other?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “we are just entering business.  In the first case I charged you merely for the work done; in the second, I charge you for the idea.”

“What idea?” he inquired.

“The idea that cleanliness is part of any business man’s capital.”

“Well, go ahead.”

When both signs were polished I offered to do the big plate-glass windows for ten cents each.  This was thirty cents below the regular price, and I was permitted to do the job.  Tim, of course, took his cap off, rolled his shirtsleeves up and worked with a will beside me.  After that, we swept the sidewalk, earning the total sum of thirty-five cents.  We tried to do other stores, but the nationality of most of them was against us; nevertheless, in the course of the afternoon, we made a dollar and a half.  I took Tim to “Beefsteak John’s,” and we had dinner.  Then I began to boast of the performance and to warn Tim that on the following Sunday afternoon I should explain my success to the men in the bunk-house.

“Yes, yes, indeed, yer honour,” said Tim, “y’re a janyus!  There’s no doubt about that at all, at all!  But——­”

“Go on,” I said.

“I was jist switherin’,” said Tim, “what a wontherful thing ut is that a man kin always hev worruk whin he invints ut.”

“Well, that’s worth knowing, Tim,” I said, disappointedly.  “Did you learn anything else?”

“There’s jist one thing that you forgot, yer honour.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Begorra, you forgot that if all the brains in the bunk-house wor put together they cudn’t think of a thrick like that—­the thrick of cleaning a window wid stuff from a dhrugstore!  They aint got brains.”