Just before leaving the commercial school, I made application for a position with a commission house in our city. They took me on trial and for awhile it seemed as if they would not keep me. But I succeeded in sticking and by burning some midnight oil, and a lot of digging managed to fall in line with the work, and it was a task, for the accounting system used was a cost-finding system and made the work of the bookkeeper difficult and a matter of great responsibility. I remained in this position three years when I resigned to accept a position with a lumbering firm during one winter’s operations.
I had long come to learn that my education was inadequate and many times regretted that I left the high school. To make the best of it, I spent most of my evenings in the public library and in my room covering lost ground. As my ignorance made itself more and more manifest, I began to think out some plan by which I could get to college. The winter I worked with the lumbering firm, I was employed three evenings a week tutoring a class of men in a large coöperative department store, who wanted to make ready for promotions. This work brought me some money and experience. The money I had saved would not keep me more than a year in college, but I thought that with a little more preparation I could teach the commercial subjects in some college in return for my expenses. So I resolved to take my earnings and attend the Zanerian School of Penmanship, Columbus, Ohio, that I might be capable of teaching Penmanship as well as Stenography and Bookkeeping; but father was stricken with pneumonia and disabled for six months and I gave him the greater part of my savings to help him out, and retained only $150.00, which would pay all traveling expenses, tuition and room rent, but would leave nothing for board. Yet I went to Columbus, and a week had not passed before I had a place as waiter in one of the best restaurants in the city, where I worked 2-1/2 hours a day and got my three meals, and the work did not interfere with my classes. Numbers of students in the Ohio State University and other colleges of Columbus earned their board that way. I made many acquaintances through my connection with the church, Sunday school and Y. M. C. A., but my being a waiter in a restaurant did not seem to hurt my standing with them.