Addison Broadhurst, Fifth Avenue Hotel,

New York City.

Springfellow & Company have a lawyer here. and insist on immediate payment of our account. Attorney demands a full statement. Rush things as fast as possible in New York. We must have the money by to-morrow.

T

HIS

HIGGINS.

was the message that stared up at me from the Western Union blank. Money, indeed! Where could

we

get any money? I had refused a charity gift, and there was no place to borrow any, unless I were to go to more of my friends and work the special partnership plan all over again. But if I did that, it must be a swindle! I had done it in good faith the other time, but now, after Lombard had laid me open, I could not do it except by fraud.

So I called up the railroad ticket office and engaged my berth back to Lost River. Then I sent this telegram to Higgins:

We are in wrong, and if we get out we must get out right. Lombard turns us down and any further attempt to raise money would be crooked. Our only course is to put the whole proposition squarely up to creditors. Home on fast train to-morrow morning.

BROADHURST.

These things done, I had six hours before train time. I spent the interval before dinner in walking about the retail and wholesale districts. In those days business New York was confined pretty well below Twenty-third Street. But now I fell to speculating on the probable growth of Manhattan. As I walked through

Union Square I remembered that it was once a pauper graveyard, far from the business and home life of the city. I recalled that Madison Square was formerly a mere junction point of the old Boston and Bloomingdale roads. A little later, as I stood at the Bowling Green oval, a bit of its history came back to me. Here was once the very centre of New York's activities. Yet now it was on the southern fringe of the city.

I dined quite cheerfully in a little restaurant down on Maiden Lane, and was surprised to discover an appetite for a broiled steak with French-fried potatoes, topped off with apple-tapioca and coffee. And then I lit a cigar with something of my erstwhile assurance. A new purpose had sprung up within me and banished my discouragement.

After dinner I took a Broadway car and rode far northward to Central Park. Up one street and down another I strolled, still speculating on the time when this outlying district would afford a most extraordinary market. Ah, I was still under thirty! I could afford to wait. In twentyfive years I would still be in the prime of life. I was just on the borderland of opportunity.

In like manner there are men all over the Nation to-day who stand on the borders of success, yet perhaps are deep down in Bunyan's Slough of Despond - that boggy country we all traverse at times. There are a thousand cities and towns in the land that will multiply themselves. time and again in the quarter-century to come, and the crowding of the markets. will lift many a merchant to the highlands of endeavor. But the men who are thus

to climb out of the bog must look ahead patiently, and plan.

As the hour for my departure from New York drew closer I strolled toward the more settled districts, and, at the last, came into the street where Ruth Starrington lived. She was in Europe, but some impulse moved me to pass down the opposite side of the street and to pause a minute and gaze on the shadows within which lay her home. The house was utterly dark and bleak, and the sight of it filled me with a sudden revulsion from the exhilaration that had come over me since dinner. All my trials and problems swept back upon me, and the castles that had grown up in my brain were snuffed out.

Two days later the department store of Broadhurst & Higgins passed into the hands of a receiver.

The hounds had closed in on us the whole pack of them. Springfellow had the lead; then came Switcher & Brothers; Armbruster, Son & Company were close behind; and trailing after the latter firm was John Dobbs, who was really the junior partner of his mother in a drygoods commission business. It seemed as if all the fathers and sons and brothers and mothers in the wholesale drygoods trade got after us. Then when Lost River got the tip, the avalanche of bills fairly covered us.

The things that happened during the succeeding days were gall. For instance, we heard from most of our twenty special partners. One of them, Michael O'Rourke of Lombard's, wired us: "Where do I get off?" Al Frisbie, another, was more brutal. "You are a couple of frauds," he

wrote.

But there was a redeeming side to it. Charlie Moore of Lombard's Toys, was a veritable prince to us. "I'll not give the thing a thought," he wrote. "Forget that I was a partner. But if you and Hig need a few hundred for personal expenses, on the q. t., wire me and I'll send down the currency by express."

We declined this generous offer. "I want no more debts," I told Higgins. "I'll never see daylight again."

That was the way it looked to me then. But you know that when a man finally gets on the right track he can often hew

his way through a mountain of debt in an incredibly short time.

Well, when the store was opened for the grand closing-out sale there was the biggest crush of buyers ever seen in Lost River. Higgins and I stood by and watched the crowds ruefully. Surely, here was true irony of fate! For a week the rush continued. It seemed scarcely possible that all those people could be recruited from the Lost River selling zone.

"It's like going fishing," observed Higgins. "You may sit in a boat all day and not get a nibble, and when you come in at night you are ready to swear that there isn't a fish in the sea. But pretty soon you see a crew of professional fishermen coming in with their nets. Lo! They've got a whole boat-load.”

Everything went, without reservation. The velvet ribbons that had long been stickers were cleaned out in a hurry. Silks, plushes, and flannels melted away. We had some French ginghams that we hadn't been able to sell at all, but somehow they vanished. Our failles, ottomans, and surahs all disappeared. It was the same with the white piques and batistes, with our tailor-mades, and with our evening coats that had dragged so badly. Even our expensive cluny and handembroidered centrepieces were snapped up, along with the Honiton laces and a big lot of embroideries.

It was the same with household furnishings, perfumery, door hinges, and picture frames. The appetite Lost River had for our stuff was amazing. But the stuff went for a song. Unless your business is really a going one, it isn't safe to count much on merchandise assets. There is no asset more unstable, once it begins to stand still. You've got to keep crowding goods off the shelves all the time, and crowding more goods on.

All this occupied a month or so. Higgins had been gone for some time, and I was living in a six-dollar bedroom at a modest boarding-house. On the day I packed my trunk to leave Lost River I didn't have money enough in my pocket to pay my fare to New York. The ultimate loss at the store was still problematical. It seemed likely that in time the receiver

might collect enough money to clear up most if not all the debts, and perhaps pay off part of the special partnership funds. But, with the heavy legal expenses and the costs of closing out the business, the prospects even for this were dubious. On the evening preceding my departure I went to my room and got together some of my neckwear, shirts, and fancy hosiery. Across the hall a couple of bank clerks roomed, and I stepped to their door and called them to my diminutive quarters.

"I've got a lot of stuff here that I don't want to be bothered with," I said. "Rather than lug it back to New York, I'll sell it at auction.”

The stuff was worth twenty-five dollars, but I sold it for four dollars and eighty cents, and thus raised money enough to make up my deficiency on transportation.

The next evening Higgins met me at the ferry in New York and, arm in arm, we walked over to Greenwich Street and took a car to his quarters up near Chelsea Square. He was still idle, but was expecting to land a job soon, as buyer for a silkimporting house. He might have gone back to Lombard's but he couldn't choke down his pride.

"I'll never go back there, Broady," he declared, "never in a thousand years!"

"Nor I, Hig!" I assured him. "New York is big, and I mean to show Lombard that I'm not a mere hanger-on."

I was firmly resolved, from the very day I returned to New York, to go into business again. The spirit of overcoming obstacles took hold of me firmly. But the immediate problem was getting a job.

I was out of work for only a week. Then I landed as superintendent of floorwalkers in a Broadway store. This place paid me only thirty dollars a week, but I got a little room in a cheap boarding-house just off Seventh Avenue and adjusted my scale of living accordingly. I was considerably behind on my sister's school expenses, and for two or three months I was able to save nothing toward my new business capital. My sister Jean was now quite a young lady and I was giving her a course in millinery designing. In a short time she would be self-supporting.

Along in the middle of the summer a most unexpected thing happened. I received a note from Joel Langenbeck, head of Langenbeck Brothers' wholesale house, asking me to call at his office that afternoon at three.

I found him there at the appointed time, and introduced myself, for I had never met him. He looked me over keenly.

"I've heard of you, on and off, for a long time," he said, as he motioned me to a chair. "That was a bad mess you made of it down at Lost River, Broadhurst. There's been something wrong with your education over at Lombard & Hapgood's, or such a thing couldn't happen. Lombard is a fine man and in some ways a splendid merchant, but he runs that whole business himself — he's the chief engineer, train-master, and road superintendent of locomotives. If Lombard were to drop off suddenly, the business would go to the wall in a year.

"Now here in my own business I lay great stress on my organization. I want big, broad fellows, not men with arrested mental development. In my establishment to-day I have at least half a dozen men who could. take this concern and go on with it, should anything happen to me. I make it my business to get men with inherent capacity, and then I train them. I pay them what they are worth to me — I'm not afraid of an extra thousand or two above the usual salaries. Every now and then one of my men gets too big for a salaried job and strikes out for himself; but I don't complain. That's the sort of men I want here, Broadhurst

men who have an ambition to get into business, and who have the ability."

He turned in his chair so as to face me squarely. "How would you like to work for me?" he inquired. "I've been watching you, and I think you're the sort I want. I liked your nerve in starting a department store down at Lost River, though I refused you credit. It wasn't because I doubted your honesty or that of your partner, but because I knew you didn't understand what you were up against. I felt sure you'd be back here in New York, and I made up my mind I'd keep an eye on you and give you a show. I can start

you at twenty-five hundred, as assistant manager of our traveling men."

I accepted the place on the spot. However, I began at the same time to dissect New York on my own account. I spent most of my spare hours analyzing my opportunity. My evenings and part of my Sundays were devoted to exploring New York and to reducing the markets of its different sections to figures. The thing that interested me most at the start was the problem of finding a location. Just what kind of goods I should sell the future must determine.

I don't mean to take you through all this laborious process with me, but I want to give you a glimpse of the finish. After After I had tramped most of the streets as far as the Harlem River, and made endless tabulations, I came back to a local centre which I shall designate as Junction Square.

Now I took a map of New York and drew a circle embracing an area of twenty blocks' diameter, with the Square as the centre. There were no directories that would give me information concerning the population of this particular area, so the following Sunday I spent the afternoon in personal inspection of a number of streets. I counted the houses, made a careful record of their types, and observed in a critical manner the people themselves.

To go over the whole area in this way required many weeks, but from the data thus secured I calculated the approximate population in my chosen zone, and divided it into classes.

I was somewhat disappointed in the total number of people who lived in this territory something like twenty thousand but I was not laying my plans for the present alone. I was certain that retail trade must grow toward me along several streets which converged at the Junction. It was here the currents must meet. If I could assume that New York would grow at all, then I'd be safe in taking a ten-year lease, if I chose or, in fact, a twenty-year lease.

Over in one segment of my district the circle included quite a lot of aristocratic homes, but I deducted this class altogether from my reckonings. This left the great bulk of my prospective markets composed

But I was not satisfied; I resolved on a still closer analysis. I instituted a sociological study of the people in this part of New York. I made the acquaintance of local merchants, policemen, firemen, janitors of apartment-buildings, and of the householders themselves wherever I could. I was enabled to get glimpses of typical homes from the inside, and of the churches, schools, and places of entertainment.

You see, I did just what Lombard had advised: got down to the level of the population to whom I hoped to sell goods.

As I dictate, I have before me some of the notes I took during my researches. I have long lists of household furnishings — gathered, like an artist's sketches, from life. I have similar lists of clothing, of crockery, trunks, books, stationery, and the like. Whenever I discovered any essential fact or prevailing taste, I multiplied it by the number of people involved with it, and thus got a total. For example, I was able to estimate the number and average cost of the hats worn by girls of sixteen or thereabouts. I could tell, likewise, about what the average family was willing to expend for kitchen utensils, toys— or novelties.

One night I took my data over to Higgins's bachelor quarters on West Nineteenth Street. 'What kind of business shall I start?" I asked.

He detected the note in my voice, for he laughed. "That girl of yours must be considered, I suppose," he hinted. "A year's absence would be rather tough. Suppose we say that you'll be away six months, and then home for a month, and then away for six months again? Besides, Miss Starrington is likely to be abroad herself during the year, and you'll have a chance to see her over there. I should dislike interfering with your plans in that respect, Broadhurst. She's a fine girl! Luck to you!

"I saw you two at the show the other night," he explained. "You couldn't do better, Broadhurst. I like to see my boys make suitable alliances. I believe in marriage, and you are old enough to quit your bachelor life. Besides, if you don't get her pretty soon, some other chap will. And see here, Broadhurst, I am going to make it possible for you to marry and live respectably for a young couple starting out. How would sixty-five hundred dollars a year strike you as a salary? A very decent title will go with it, too - Foreign Manager."

Now I have no inclination to drag any merely personal affairs into this narrative, but I must relate in a paragraph or two the incidents bearing on my renewed acquaintance with the young lady to whom Langenbeck had referred.

The fact of the matter was this: I had divorced business from affairs of the heart. In the plans I was slowly forming, neither Miss Starrington nor any other girl had a part. By this I mean that my judgment -built by degrees out of my somewhat tedious analysis of markets - was no longer tinged with the colors of romance. In my business planning, I was an economist pure and simple, as direct as John Stuart Mill and as philosophical as Aristotle or Plato.

In my personal life, on the other hand, I was Addison Broadhurst; and, as such, I called one evening at the Starrington home, made a clean breast of my commercial shortcomings, and then forgot - with much effort, I confess that I had ever been in business or ever hoped to be. In secret I made up my mind that if the girl showed me favor as Addison Broadhurst

I went back time and again. That's about all I need to say now.

But I must acknowledge that Langenbeck's sudden move in ordering me abroad quite upset my economics. I had to confess to myself that however much of a business machine a man resolves to make of himself, he is still a man.

I was in the position of one who has made up his mind to pursue a definite ambition yet finds himself sorely tempted to abandon all his aims in order to follow a glittering light that beckons him out of his course. I had been firmly resolved to go into business, and on that purpose I had undertaken exhaustive research and laid out detailed specifications. Yet here was Langenbeck calmly luring me away with a salary of sixty-five hundred, with an attractive position, and with his advice that I marry Miss Starrington!

It is always one of the difficult things in life to follow a purpose. Millions of men, I am sure, have come out into old age as failures because they fell victims to diverting allurements. I regret to confess that I fell before the temptation placed in my way by Joel Langenbeck, and took the job as Foreign Manager for Langenbeck Brothers. I had planned to go into business in the spring, but I gave it up.

I called at Ruth Starrington's home that evening to tell her of my unexpected transfer to foreign lands, and to say that I should surely see her as much as possible in Europe. I knew she was going abroad in a month or two, for the summer. I discovered, however, that she and her mother had gone to Virginia for a few weeks they were Virginians by birth. Therefore, I could only leave a note of farewell.

When I sailed away from New York next day on the old liner City of Rome, I confess that I felt something like a deserter. I had made an exhaustive analysis of my New York opportunity, and was so sure of the field that lay before me there in Manhattan, that to go away like this, in