I coolly asked Mr. Nazro what was the prevailing rate of exchange, and he replied that it was $4.80 to the pound. "That is just 24 cents to the shilling, two cents to the penny," I said, and went to work. It was then noon. It would have taken some clerks a week to do the task; but I had completed it by six o'clock that afternoon.
When I handed the list back to him, he asked, with an astonished air, if I had finished it. "You can see for yourself," I replied. "There it is, all made out properly and correctly." "How do you know it is right?" said he. "Because I have proved it," I replied.
This little task decided my fate. Mr. Nazro told me the office hours were from eight until six, with the rest of the time, the evenings, all my own.
The next morning I arrived at the office promptly, and asked Mr. Nazro what I was to do. He handed me a package of bills. I saw they were the bills upon which I had worked the day before, changing English to American currency. There were 150 of them. Each was to contain the amount that must be collected from each of the consignees. I at once set to work on this new task, and completed it in less time than it had taken me to change the money. I went with the bills to Mr. Nazro, and asked what I was to do next. He gave me a collector's wallet into which to put the bills, and told me to go out and collect the amounts due. This was a staggerer, but I set about the difficult undertaking without any feeling of discouragement.
At that time Boston was a strange city to me. It is true that I had lived on the edge of it for years; but my ceaseless work at the grocery store had kept me from roaming over the town and learning anything about it. The only section I was at all familiar with was the neighborhood of the old Quincy Market, to which I had driven so many wagon-loads of garden and farm "truck" in my boyhood days. I was as green as a genuine countryman who had come to town for the first time in his life. I knew not a soul in the city. But off I started, nothing abashed, with the great wallet of bills under my arm. I intended to succeed at this task.
I soon picked out my course through the city. I worked through street after street, and collected as I went. I did not stop, but kept steadily on, and in the afternoon found myself at the end of the list. I had collected nearly every bill.
