Guiltily he tiptoed down-stairs and went snuffling along the dusty unvaried brick side streets, wondering where in all New York he could go.  He read minutely a placard advertising an excursion to the Catskills, to start that evening.  For an exhilarated moment he resolved to go, but—­” oh, there was a lot of them rich society folks up there.”  He bought a morning American and, sitting in Union Square, gravely studied the humorous drawings.

He casually noticed the “Help Wanted” advertisements.

They suggested an uninteresting idea that somehow he might find it economical to go venturing as a waiter or farm-hand.

And so he came to the gate of paradise: 

MEN WANTED. Free passage on cattle-boats to Liverpool feeding cattle.  Low fee.  Easy work.  Fast boats.  Apply International and Atlantic Employment Bureau,—­Greenwich Street.

“Gee!” he cried, “I guess Providence has picked out my first hike for me.”

CHAPTER III

HE STARTS FOR THE LAND OF ELSEWHERE

The International and Atlantic Employment Bureau is a long dirty room with the plaster cracked like the outlines on a map, hung with steamship posters and the laws of New York regarding employment offices, which are regarded as humorous by the proprietor, M. Baraieff, a short slender ejaculatory person with a nervous black beard, lively blandness, and a knowledge of all the incorrect usages of nine languages.  Mr. Wrenn edged into this junk-heap of nationalities with interested wonder.  M. Baraieff rubbed his smooth wicked hands together and bowed a number of times.

Confidentially leaning across the counter, Mr. Wrenn murmured:  “Say, I read your ad. about wanting cattlemen.  I want to make a trip to Europe.  How—?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, Mistaire.  I feex you up right away.  Ten dollars pleas-s-s-s.”

“Well, what does that entitle me to?”

“I tole you I feex you up.  Ha!  Ha!  I know it; you are a gentleman; you want a nice leetle trip on Europe.  Sure.  I feex you right up.  I send you off on a nice easy cattleboat where you won’t have to work much hardly any.  Right away it goes.  Ten dollars pleas-s-s-s.”

“But when does the boat start?  Where does it start from?” Mr. Wrenn was a bit confused.  He had never met a man who grimaced so politely and so rapidly.

“Next Tuesday I send you right off.”

Mr. Wrenn regretfully exchanged ten dollars for a card informing Trubiggs, Atlantic Avenue, Boston, that Mr.  “Ren” was to be “ship 1st poss. catel boat right away and charge my acct. fee paid Baraieff.”  Brightly declaring “I geef you a fine ship,” M. Baraieff added, on the margin of the card, in copper-plate script, “Best ship, easy work.”  He caroled, “Come early next Tuesday morning, “and bowed out Mr. Wrenn like a Parisian shopkeeper.  The row of waiting servant-girls curtsied as though they were a hedge swayed by the wind, while Mr. Wrenn self-consciously hurried to get past them.