It was comparatively easy for Jack Delancy in Mr. Fletcher’s office to face about suddenly and say yes to the proposal made him.  There was on him the pressure of necessity, of his own better nature acting under a sense of his wife’s approval; and besides, there was a novelty that attracted him in trying something absolutely new to his habits.

But it was one thing to begin, and another, with a man of his temperament, to continue.  To have regular hours, to attend to the details of a traffic that was to the last degree prosaic, in short, to settle down to hard work, was a very different thing from the “business” about which Jack and his fellows at the club used to talk so much, and to fancy they were engaged in.  When the news came to the Union that Delancy had gone into the house of Fletcher & Co. as a clerk, there was a general smile, and a languid curiosity expressed as to how long he would stick to it.

In the first day or two Jack was sustained not only by the original impulse, but by a real instinct in learning about business ways and details that were new to him.  To talk about the business and about the markets, to hear plans unfolded for extension and for taking advantage of fluctuations in prices, was all very well; but the drudgery of details —­copying, comparing invoices, and settling into the routine of a clerk’s life, even the life of a confidential clerk—­was contrary to the habits of his whole life.  It was not to be expected that these habits would be overcome without a long struggle and many back-slidings.

The little matter of being at his office desk at nine o’clock in the morning began to seem a hardship after the first three or four days.  For Mr. Fletcher not to walk into his shop on the stroke of ten would have been such a reversal of his habits as to cause him as much annoyance as it caused Jack to be bound to a fixed hour.  It was only the difference in training.  But that is saying everything.

Besides, while the details of his work, the more he got settled in them, were not to his taste, he was daily mortified to find himself ignorant of matters which the stupidest clerk in the office seemed to know by instinct.  This acted, however, as a sort of stimulus, and touched his pride.  He determined that he would not be humiliated in this way, and during office hours he worked as diligently as Mr. Fletcher could have desired.  He had pledged himself to the trial, and he summoned all his intelligence to back his effort.

And it is true that the satisfaction of having a situation, of doing something, the relief to the previous daily anxiety and almost despair, raised his spirits.  It was only when he thought of the public opinion of his little world, of some other occupation more befitting his education, of the vast change from his late life of ease and luxury to this of daily labor with a clerk’s pay, that he had hours of revolt and cursed his luck.

No, Jack’s battle was not won in a day, or a week, or a year.  And before it was won he needed more help than his own somewhat irresolute will could give.  It is the impression of his biographer that he would have failed in the end if he had been married to a frivolous and selfish woman.