The Confessions of Artemas Quibble | Page 7

of the inhabitants.
I simply landed, after a seven hours' journey from Boston, with a
considerable quantity of fine raiment--rather too fine, as I soon
discovered, for the ordinary uses of a serious-minded, working
youth--some fifty odd dollars, and a well-developed bump of self-
confidence that was supported by a strong reserve resolution not to let
anybody get ahead of me. I had all the assurance of a man double my
years and an easy way of making acquaintances that was destined to
stand me in good stead, but I do not wish to be understood as admitting
that my manners were offensive or that I was in any degree supercilious.
I was simply a good fellow who had always enjoyed the comradeship
of other good fellows, and as a result felt reasonably sure that the rest
of the world would treat him kindly. Moreover, I could dissemble
without difficulty and, if occasion arose, could give the impression of
being a diffident and modest young man, ready and anxious to order
himself "lowly and humbly before his betters."
Yet I had seen enough of the world to know that unless a man puts a
high appraisal upon his attainments and ability no one else is likely to
do so, and that the public takes one, nine times out of ten, at his own
valuation. Coming on the clay itself: I wore my hair rather long, with
an appreciable modicum of bear's grease well rubbed in, side whiskers
and white beaver, and carried a carpet bag on which was embroidered a
stag's head in yellow on a background of green worsted. And the
principal fact to be observed in this connection is that, instead of
creating a smile as I passed out of the Grand Central Station, I was
probably regarded as a rather smart and stylishly dressed young man.
I had a card to some young actors in the city, given me by my Thespian
friends in Boston, and it proved but a short trip on the horse-cars down
Fourth Avenue to the locality, near the Academy of Music, then as now
frequented by the fraternity. I began my professional career, then, by
taking lodgings in an actors' boarding- house, and I am free to confess
that at the time I was undecided whether to follow the bar or the boards.
I have since frequently observed that the same qualities make for
success in both, and had it not been for the fact that I found my new
friends somewhat down at the heels and their rate of emolument

exceedingly low, as well as for a certain little incident to be recounted
shortly, I might well have joined the group of future Booths and
Forrests that loitered along the near-by Rialto, looking for jobs as
Roman soldiers or footmen in some coming production.
But the change from my well-appointed lodgings in Cambridge and my
luxurious surroundings at the Cock and Supr to a distinctly shabby
theatrical boarding-house, where the guests plainly exhibited traces of
the lack of proper ablutional facilities and the hallways smelt of
cabbage and onions, was a distinct shock to my highly sensitive tastes.
However, my new acquaintances proved warm-hearted and hospitable
and did everything in their power to make me feel at my ease, with the
result that in spite of the cabbage and the wooden slats that served as
springs in my bed--which nearly filled the rear hall bed-room I had
hired for one week at four dollars and twenty-five cents--I resolved to
postpone entering upon an active career until I should know the city
better and have made a few friends.
Those of my new comrades who were lucky enough to have
employment did not rise in the morning until the neighborhood of
twelve o'clock, and those who had no employment at all followed their
example. I thus found myself adopting of necessity, as it were, the
pleasant practice of sauntering out on Broadway after a one o'clock
breakfast, and of spending most of the afternoon, evening, and
following morning in or about the same locality. We usually went to
some theatrical show on what was known as "paper," and I afterward
joined my actor friends at a restaurant, where we sang songs and told
stories until the gas-lamps were extinguished and gray dawn crept over
the house-tops. Downtown--into the mysterious district of Wall
Street--I did not, as yet, go, and I might still be haunting the stage
entrances of the theatres had it not been for an adventure in which I was
an involuntary participant.
It so happened that among my new acquaintances was a careless,
rattle-brained youth known as Toby Robinson, who in spite of some
histrionic ability was constantly losing his job and always in debt. He
was a smooth-faced, rather stout,