The first night I slept in the same building with the store, but above it. About one o'clock in the morning the bell rang. Some one wanted the doctor at once. I said I wasn't a doctor, and that the doctor was not there. The messenger ran off. This was bad enough, to be routed up in the middle of the night that way. The next day the druggist went away from the store on some business. I sampled everything edible in the place. I tried the different kinds of candy, and sirups, and then went out and bought some lemonade and a dozen raw oysters. The result may be imagined. After a few minutes of Mont Pelée, I decided that I had had enough of the drug business. I told the druggist my decision, shut the door, and left the store, a disappointed and lonely little fellow.
I hesitated as to my next step. But there was the old farmhouse--and it invited me very tenderly just then to return. I was not conquered yet, but would fight on. I turned, as if by instinct, toward Cambridgeport, the scene of my traffickings with the grocer. My uncle Clarke lived there, the uncle that had brought me on from New Orleans; but I could not make up my mind to go to him, either. The family would laugh at me. No! I would get another place--but it would not be in a drug-store!
Then I had an inspiration. There was the grocer named Holmes! Why not try him? I would. So I went to the store of Joseph A. Holmes, at the corner of Main Street and Brighton Road. To my eager inquiry, Mr. Holmes said: "You have come just in time. We want a boy." Then he asked me what wages I wanted. "Just enough to live on," I said. "You can live with us," he said; "and I will give you one dollar a week." That meant $50 a year. It was a great sum to me. I began to work at once.
This was the winter of '43-'44, and I was fourteen. My work was to drive the grocery wagon up to Old Cambridgeport, take orders, and fill them. I had to get up at four o'clock in the morning to look after the horse, just as I had done on the farm, and to get everything ready for the trip. I had the orders of the day before to fill and to deliver at the college. Besides, I had to work in the store after I came back from Old Cambridgeport. In the evening I had to look after the lamps, sweep out, put up the shutters, and do numberless other little things about the store. The store was closed at ten o'clock at night. Then I would put out the lights, which were old-fashioned oil lamps.
