IV
Having conquered my fears and tasted adventure, I was hungry now for more. My wife felt the change in me when I saw her that evening in Brooklyn. In fact, she has always declared that it was the influence which I brought into the house that night-the feeling of new vigor and of new hope-that made George take a turn for the better and get well.
As usual, on my Brooklyn subway trip, I read the want advertisements in the evening papers. An office over in a small New Jersey town was advertising for a printer! I read it two or three times. But if I had not taken that Central Park adventure trip, I don’t believe I should have answered this advertisement. I had never thought of going to New Jersey to look for a job. I felt all the self-centred New Yorker’s prejudices against New Jersey. But I did go.I was up and on my way early the next morning.
And that was how I happened to meet Ben Hutchins and find my life’s big opportunity.
The first time I saw Ben Hutchins, I laughed. I knew at once that he was a crank. He was an old-school printer, like myself. For years he had run this little job office and published a weekly newspaper. Afterwards, I learned that he had plenty of money-was, in fact, rich-and that the only reason he kept on publishing his paper was that he didn’t quite know how to get out of the habit.
His little old one-story building stood off by itself, in the business section of this small New Jersey town. To get to it, you had to cross a bridge and follow a narrow dirt path. The path this morning was muddy, after a short flurry of wet snow. The paint was worn off the building. One of the old-fashioned shutters was loose and flapped in the November wind. On the roof was a roosterweather-vane that looked as if it might have been crowing into the teeth of a half-century of storms.
I opened the door and went in. It was one large room-a typical, old-fashioned, country-newspaper office. Its assortment of junk looked as if it might have been accumulating there since the American Revolution. An antiquated roll-topped desk stood in the corner, by one of the front windows. A tipsy old swivel-chair stood in front of it. Near it, a lop-sided old waste-basket spilled its overload of newspapers on the floor. In the centre of the room a rusty base-burner stove glowed with a red-hot coal fire.
Ben Hutchins, in his shirt-sleeves, and wearing a printer’s dirty apron, stood in front of one of the cases, setting type. He was a stockily built man of about seventy, with a belligerent shock of gray hair that stood up straight on his head.
When I entered, he waited to space out a line before recognizing my presence. Then he turned and glowered at me overhis glasses, which hung on the tip of his bulbous nose.
“Well-?” he said, finally, after a critical sniff.
Then, as I said, I laughed-a laugh born of my feeling of new confidence, gained from the teachings of the Voice. It caught Ben Hutchins’s interest and made him take a liking to me from the start. I have learned that he is very quick and very decided in his likes and dislikes. In fact, he never does anything half-way. He is either stubbornly for a thing or against it. No argument can ever convince him either way. And down under all his surface peculiarities he has a keen and most original sense of humor. It was the liking that he conceived for me from the start which made him let me do the things that I have done.
He gave me again the once-over; then he, too, indulged in a faint grin.
“I’ve come for that job,” I informed him, with all my new courage of adventure. “And I’m just the man you’re looking for.”
“Oh, are you?” and he gave another of his critical sniffs, which I soon discovered to be habitual. “Well, come and sit down, and we’ll see. I may not be of your opinion.”
With his composing-stick still in his hand, he led the way to the corner where stood the ancient roll-top desk. He seated himself heavily in the creaking swivel-chair, and I pulled up another old chair that stood near. All this time he was studying me closely over his glasses.
“I’ve got the reputation,” he told me, after I was seated, “of never keeping a man very long.”
He waited to see if this was going to discourage me any. But it didn’t, and so he went on to say:-
“But the ones that come out here for a job are generally no good. Or, if they are, they get discouraged and don’t want to stay.”
“Well, I’m going to stay,” I said, “you can’t get rid of me. And I’m all to the good.”
Again he met my laughing gaze, andagain he grinned. Then after studying me once more, he came to a decision. He rheumatically pulled himself to his feet and said:-
“Well, take off your coat and go to work.”
And that ended our conference. We made no sort of bargain, said nothing whatever about the pay I was to get, or what I was expected to do. It was like Ben Hutchins-that snap sort of conclusion. But once he has made up his mind, you may be sure that he will carry his part of the bargain to the end. Of course, I had to learn this about him. I thought then that he was just going to try me out, give me a chance to make good if I could.
I took off my overcoat and other coat, and hung them up with my hat. Then I found another printer’s dirty apron, and started in to work.
It may be hard to understand how a man, after having been employed for years in one of New York’s big printing-plants, should have finally found hislife’s opportunity in that little country junk-shop of a printing-office. But that is what I did. I could not have done so, however, without having had the experience of the previous few days, as well as the new lessons I was learning all the time from the Voice.
It was because I was finding youth that I found my opportunity.Youth, which is courageous, venturesome, progressive, optimistic, andcreative! Cowardly old age, pessimistic, stagnant, and traveling in ruts, never finds a big life-opportunity.