So you see me installed at Mr. Finkel-stein's as clerk, errand boy and general assistant. Next morning I entered upon the discharge of my duties, my kind employer showing me what to do and how to do it. Under his supervision I opened and swept out the store, dusted the counter, polished up the glass and nickel-work of the show-cases, and, in a word, made the place ship-shape and tidy for the day. Then we withdrew into the back parlor, and sat down to a fine savory breakfast that the old housekeeper Henrietta had laid there. She ate at table with us, but uttered not a syllable during the repast; and, much to my amazement, Mr. Finkelstein talked to me about her in her very presence as freely and as frankly as if she had been stone deaf, or a hundred miles away.

“She ain't exaictly what you call hainsome, Kraikory,” he said; “but she's as solid as dey make 'em. She was a second cousin of my deceased vife's, and she's vun of de graindest cooks in de United States of America. May be you don't believe it, hey? Vail, you shust vait till some day you eat vun of her big dinners, and den you'll see. I tell you what I do. When Solly gets back from de road I'll invite him and my daughter to dinner here de first Sunday aifternoon, shust on purpose for you to see de vay Henrietta can cook when she really settles down to pusiness. It's simply vunderful. You'll be surprised. De vay she cooks a raisined fish, sveet and sour—ach! it makes my mout vater shust to tink of it. Vail, she's awful goot-hearted-too, Kraikory; but so old—du lieber Herr! You couldn't hardly believe it. It's fearful, it's aictually fearful. Why, she's old enough to be my mudder, and I'm going on sixty-seven already. Dot's a solemn faict.”

“Is she deaf?” I asked.

“Daif?” he repeated. “Vail, my kracious! What put dot idea in your head? What in de vorld made you tink she's daif? She ain't no more daif as you are yourself.”

“Why,” I explained, “I thought she might be deaf, because she doesn't seem to notice what you're saying about her.”

“Oh! Vail, dot beats de deck. Dot's pretty goot. O, no! dot ain't becoase she's daif, Kraikory; dot's becoase she's so funny. She's vun of de funniest ladies in de city of New York. Why, look at here; she's lived in dis country going on forty years already; and she's so funny dot she ain't learned ten vorts of de English lainguage yet. Dot's as true as I'm alife. She don't understand what me and you are talking about, no more as if we spoke Spainish.”

After we had folded our napkins, “Vail, now, Kraikory,” began Mr. Finkelstein, “dis morning you got a lesson in being sheneral assistant already, don't you? Vail, now I give you a lesson in being errant boy. Come along mit me.” He led me to the front door of the shop, and, pointing to a house across the street, resumed, “You see dot peelding ofer dere, what's got de sign out, Ferdinand Flisch, photo-graipher? You see it all right, hey? Vail, now I tell you what you do. You run along ofer dere, and you climb up to de top floor, which is where Mr. Flisch's estaiblishment is situated, and you aisk to see Mr. Flisch, and you say to him, 'Mr. Flisch, Mr. Finkelstein sents you his coampliments, and chaillenges you to come ofer and play a little game of pinochle mit him dis morning'—you understand? Vail, now run along.”

Following Mr. Finkelstein's instructions, I mounted to the top story of the house across the way, and opened a door upon which the name Flisch was emblazoned in large gilt script. This door admitted me to a small ante-room; carpeted, furnished with a counter, several chairs, and a sofa, hung all round the walls with framed photographs, presumably specimens of Mr. Flisch's art, and smelling unpleasantly of the chemicals that photographers employ. A very pretty and very tiny little girl, who couldn't have been a day older than I, if she was so old, sat behind the counter, reading a book. At my entrance, she glanced up; and her eyes, which were large and dark, seemed to ask me what I wished.

“Please, I should like to see Mr. Flisch,” I replied to her tacit question.

“I'll go call him,” said she, in a voice that was as sweet as the tinkle of a bell. “Won't you sit down?” And she left the room.

In a minute or two she came back, followed by a short, plump, red-faced, bald-pated little old gentleman, with a brisk and cheery manner, who, upon seeing me, demanded, “Well, Sonny, what you want?”

I delivered the message that Mr. Finkel-stein had charged me with, and Mr. Flisch responded, “All right. I'll come right along with you now.” So in his company I recrossed the street. On the way he remarked, “Well, Sonny, I guess I never seen you before, did I? Was you visiting by Mr. Finkelstein, perhaps?”

“O, no, sir!” I answered, and proceeded to explain my status in Mr. Finkelstein's household.

“Well, Sonny, you'll have a mighty easy time of it,” Mr. Flisch informed me. “You won't die of hard work. Mr. Finkelstein don't do no business. He don't need to. He only keeps that store for fun.”

“Now, Kraikory,” said my employer, when we had reached his door, “me and Mr. Flisch, we'll go in de parlor and play a little game of pinochle togedder; and now you sit down outside here in de store; and if any customers come, you call me.”

I sat in the store, with nothing to do, all the rest of the forenoon; but, idle though I was, the time passed quickly enough. What between looking out of the window at the busy life upon the street—a spectacle of extreme novelty and interest to me—and thinking about my own affairs and the great change that had suddenly come over them, my mind had plenty to occupy it; and I was quite surprised when all at once the clocks, of which there must have been at least a dozen in the shop, began to strike twelve. Thus far not one customer had presented himself. Just at this instant, however, the shop door opened, and the bell above it sounded. I got up to go and call Mr. Finkelstein; but when I looked at the person who had entered, I saw that it was no customer, after all. It was that same pretty little girl whom I had noticed behind the counter at Mr. Flisch's.

“I came to tell Mr. Flisch that his dinner is ready,” she announced, in that clear, sweet voice of hers.

“I'll go tell him,” said I.

I went into the back room, where the air was blue with tobacco smoke, and where the two old gentlemen were seated over their cards, and spoke to Mr. Flisch.

“All right, Sonny; I come right away,” he answered; and I returned to the store.

The little girl was still there, standing where I had left her.

“Mr. Flisch will come right away,” said I.

“Thank you,” said she.

And then, with undisguised curiosity, she and I just stood and scanned each other for a moment from the corners of our eyes. For my part, I was too bashful to make any advances, though I should have liked to scrape acquaintance with her; but she, apparently, had more courage, for, pretty soon, “What's your name?” she asked.

“My name is Gregory Brace. What's yours?”

“Mine is Rosalind Earle. How old are you?”

“I'm twelve, going on thirteen.”

“I'm eleven, going on twelve.”

And the next instant she had vanished like a flash.

Mr. Flisch shortly followed her; and it may have been a quarter of an hour later on, that my attention was suddenly arrested by the sound of music issuing from the back room, where Mr. Finkelstein remained alone. I recognized the tune as the Carnival of Venice; and it brought my heart into my mouth, for that was one of the tunes that my grandmother had used to play upon her piano. But now the instrument was not a piano. Unless my ears totally deceived me, it was a hand-organ. This struck me as very odd; and I went to the door of the parlor, and looked in. There sat Mr. Finkelstein, a newspaper open before him, and a cigar between his fingers, reading and smoking; while on the floor in front of him, surely enough, stood a hand-organ; and, with his foot upon the crank of it, he was operating the instrument just as you would operate the wheel of a bicycle.

Well, I couldn't help smiling, though I knew that it was unmannerly of me to do so. The scene was really too ludicrous for anything. Mr. Finkelstein appeared a little embarrassed when he spied me looking at him, and stopped his playing, and said rather sheepishly, with somewhat of the air of a naughty child surprised in mischief, “Vail, Kraikory, I suppose you tink I'm crazy, hey? Vail, I cain't help it; I'm so fond of music. But look at here, Kraikory; don't you say nodings to Solly about it, will you? Dere's a goot poy. Don't you mention it to him. He vouldn't naifer let me hear de laist of it.”

I having pledged myself to secrecy, Mr. Finkelstein picked the hand-organ up, and locked it away out of sight in a closet. But after we had had our dinner, he brought it forth again, and, not without some manifest hesitation, addressed me thus: “Look at here, Kraikory; dere's a proverp which says dot man is a creature of haibits. Vail, Kraikory, I got a sort of a haibit to lie down and take a short naip every day aifter my meals. And say, Kraikory, you know how fond of music I am, don't you? I simply dote on it, Kraikory. I guess maybe I'm de fondest man of music in de United States of America. And—vail, look at here, Kraikory, as you ain't got nodings in particular to do, I tought maybe you vouldn't mind to sit here a few minutes, and—and shust turn dot craink a little while I go to sleep—hey?”

I assented willingly; so Mr. Finkelstein lay down upon his lounge, and I began to turn the crank, thereby grinding out the rollicking measures of Finnigan's Ball.

“My kracious, Kraikory, you do it splendid,” the old gentleman exclaimed, by way of encouragement. “You got a graind tailent for music, Kraikory.” Then I heard him chuckle softly to himself, and murmur, “I cain't help it, I aictually cain't. I must haif my shoke.” Very soon he was snoring peacefully.

Well, to cut a long story short, my first day at Mr. Finkelstein's passed smoothly by, and so did the next and the next. In a surprisingly short time I became quite accustomed to my new mode of life, and all sense of strangeness wore away. Every morning I opened and tidied up the shop; then we breakfasted; then the routine of the day began. As Mr. Flisch had predicted, I had a very easy time of it indeed. Every afternoon I played the hand-organ, while Mr. Finkelstein indulged in his siesta; almost every forenoon I tended the store, while he and Mr. Flisch amused themselves with pinochle in the parlor. Mr. Marx and his wife dined with us I should think as often as once a week; Henrietta surpassed herself on these occasions, and I came to entertain as high an opinion of her skill in cookery as my employer could have wished.

Between little Rosalind Earle and myself a great friendship rapidly sprang up. On week-days we caught only fleeting glimpses of each other; but almost every Sunday I used to go to see her at her home, which was in Third Avenue, a short distance above our respective places of business. Her father, who had been a newspaper reporter, was dead; and her mother, a pale sad lady, very kind and sweet, went out by the day as a dressmaker and seampstress. They were wretchedly poor; and that was why little Rosalind, who ought to have worn pinafores, and gone to school, had to work for her living at Mr. Flisch's, like a grownup person. But her education proceeded after a fashion, nevertheless. In her spare moments during the day she would study her lessons, and in the evening at home she would say them to her mother. Though she was my junior by a year and more, she was already doing compound interest in arithmetic, whereas I had never got beyond long division. This made me feel heartily ashamed of myself, and so I invested a couple of dollars in some second-hand schoolbooks, and thenceforth devoted my spare moments to study, too. Almost every Sunday, as I have said, I used to go to see her; and if the weather was fine, her mother would take us for an outing in Central Park, where we would have a jolly good time racing each other over the turf of the common, or admiring the lions and tigers and monkeys and hippopotamuses, at the Arsenal. Yes, I loved little Rosalind very dearly, and every minute that I spent at her side was the happiest sort of a minute for me.

Mr. Finkelstein, when he first noticed me poring over my school-books in the shop, expressed the liveliest kind of satisfaction with my conduct.

“Dot's right, Kraikory,” he cried. “Dot's maiknificent. Go ahead mit your education. Dere ain't nodings like it. A first-claiss education—vail, sir, it's de graindest advantage a feller can haif in de baittle of life. Yes, sir, dot's a faict. You go ahead mit your education, and you study real hard, and you'll get to be—why, you might get to be an alderman, no mistake about it. But look at here, Kraikory; tell me; where you got de books, hey? You bought 'em? You don't say so? Vail, what you pay for dem, hey, Kraikory? Two tollars! Two aictual tollars! My kracious! Vail, look at here, Kraikory; I like to make you a little present of dem books, so here's a two tollar pill to reimburse you. Oh! dot's all right. Don't mention it. Put it in de baink. Do what you please mit it. I got anudder.” And every now and then during the summer he would inquire, “Vail, Kraikory, how you getting on mit your education? Vail, I suppose you must know pretty much aiferydings by dis time, hey? Vail, now I give you a sum. If I can buy fife barrels of aipples for six tollars and a quowter, how much will seventeen barrels of potatoes coast me, hey?... Ach, I was only shoking, was I? Vail, dot's a faict; I was only shoking; and you was pretty smart to find it out. But now, shoking aside, I tell you what you do. You keep right on mit your education, and you study real hard, and you'll get to be—why, you might get to be as big a man as Horace Greeley, aictually.” Horace Greeley was a candidate for the presidency that year, and he had no more ardent partisan than my employer.

After the summer had passed, and September came, Mr. Finkelstein called me into the parlor one day, and began, “Now, look at here, Kraikory; I got somedings important to talk to you about. I been tinking about dot little maitter of your education a good deal lately; and I talked mit Solly about it, and got his advice; and at laist I made up my mind dot you oughter go to school. You got so much aimbition about you, dot if you get a first-claiss education while you're young, you might get to be vun of de biggest men in New York City aifter you're grown up. Vail, me and Solly, we talked it all ofer, and we made up our mind dot you better go to school right avay.

“Vail, now I tell you what I do. I found out de public schools open for de season next Monday morning. Vail, next Monday morning I take you up to de public school in Fifty-first Street, and I get you aidmitted. And now I tell you what I do. If you study real hard, and get A-number-vun marks, and cratchuate all right when de time comes—vail, den I send you to college! Me and Solly, we talked it all ofer, and dot's what we made up our minds we oughter do. Dere ain't nodings like a good education, Kraikory; you can bet ten tousand tollars on dot. When I was your age I didn't haif no chaince at vun; and dot's why I'm so eeknorant. But now you got de chaince, Kraikory; and you go ahead and take advaintage of it. My kracious! When I see you cratchuate from college, I'll be so prout I von!t know what to do.”

I leave you to form your own opinion of Mr. Finkelstein's generosity, as well as of the gratitude that it inspired in me. Next Monday morning I entered the public school in Fifty-first Street, and a little less than two years later—namely, in the spring of 1874—I graduated. I had studied “real hard,” and got “A-number-vun” marks; Mr. Finkelstein was as good as his word, and that same spring I passed the examinations for admission to the Introductory Class of the College of the City of New York.

Well, there! In a couple of sentences I have skipped over as many years; and not one word about the hero of my story!

“But what,” I can hear you ask, “what of your Uncle Florimond in all this time? Had you given up your idea of going to him? had you forgotten your ideal of him—had he ceased to be a moving force in your life?”

No; to each of these questions my answer must be a prompt and emphatic no.

I had not by any means given up my idea of going to him; but I had, for reasons that seemed good, put off indefinitely the day of my departure. Two or three weeks after my arrival at Mr. Finkelstein's I wrote Uncle Florimond a letter, and told him of the new turn that my affairs had taken. I did not say anything about my Uncle Peter's treatment of me, because I felt somehow reluctant to let him know how unjust and unkind his own sister's son, my own father's brother, could be, and because, also, I thought it would be scarcely fair and above-board for me to tell tales, now that our bygones were bygones. I simply said that I had left Norwich, and come to New York, and gone into business; and that my purpose was to earn a lot of money just as quickly as I could, and then to set sail for France.

I received no answer from him till about six months afterward; and in this he said that he was glad I meant to come to France, but he thought it was a pity that I should go into business so early in my youth, for that must of course interrupt my education.

I hastened to reply that, since I had written my former letter to him, my outlook had again changed; that my kind and liberal employer had sent me to school, where I was working as hard as I knew how, with the promise of a college course before me if I showed proper zeal and aptitude.

I had to wait more than a year now for his next epistle; but it came at last one day towards the close of the vacation that intervened between my graduation from school and the beginning of my career at college.

“I have been ill and in trouble, my dear little nephew,” he wrote, “since the reception of thy last letter so good and so gentle; and I have lacked both the force and the heart to write to thee. At this moment at length it goes better; and I seize the first occasion to take my pen. The news of the progress which thou makest in thy studies gives me an infinite pleasure, as does also thy hope of a course at the university. And though I become from more to more impatient to meet thee, and to see with my proper eyes the grandson of my adored sister, I am happy, nevertheless, to force myself to wait for an end so precious. That thou mayst become a gentleman well-instructed and accomplished, it is my sincere desire; for it is that, I am sure of it, which my cherished sister would most ardently have wished. Be then industrious; study well thy lessons; grow in spirit as in body; remember that, though thy name is different, thou art the last of the la Bourbonnaye. I astonish myself, however, that thy Uncle Peter does not charge himself with the expenses. Is it that he has not the means? I have believed him very rich.

“Present my respects to thy worthy patron, that good Finkelstein, who, though bourgeois and shopkeeper, I must suppose is a man of heart; and think ever with tenderness of thy old devoted uncle, de la Bourbonnaye.

“Paris, the 3 7ember, 1874.”

7ember was Uncle Florimond's quaint French way of writing September, Sept, as you know, being French for seven.

And now as to those other questions that you have asked me—so far was I from having forgotten my ideal of him, so far was he from having ceased to be a moving force in my life, I have not any doubt whatever that the thought of my relationship with him, and my desire to appear to advantage in his eyes, had a great deal to do with fostering my ambition as a scholar. Certainly, the nephew of Florimond Marquis de la Bourbonnaye must not let any boy of ordinary lineage stand above him in his classes; and then, besides, how much more highly would Uncle Florimond consider me, if, when we met, he found not an untutored ignoramus, but, in his own words, “a gentleman well-instructed and accomplished!”

During the two years that I have skipped over in such summary-fashion, my friendship with little Rosalind Earle had continued as active and as cordial as it had been at the beginning. She had grown quite tall, and even prettier than ever, with her oval face and olive skin, her soft brown hair and large dark eyes, and was really almost a young lady. She had kept pace with me in my studies also, I having acted as her teacher. Every Sunday at her home I would go over with her all my lessons for the past week, imparting to her as intelligently as I was able what I myself had learned. This would supply her with subject-matter for her study during the week to come; so that on the following Sunday she would be ready for a new send-off. This was capital drill for me, because, in order to instruct another, I had to see that my own knowledge was exact and thorough. And then, besides, I enjoyed these Sunday afternoon conferences with Rosalind so heartily, that they lightened the labor of learning, and made what to a boy is usually dull grind and drudgery, to me an abundant source of pleasure. Rosalind retained her situation at Mr. Flisch's, but her salary had been materially increased. She was only thirteen years old, yet she earned the dazzling sum of six dollars every week. This was because she had acquired the art of retouching negatives, and had thus trebled her value to her employer.

But I had made another friend during those two years, whose influence upon my life at that time was perhaps even greater than Rosalind's. Among my classmates at the school in Fifty-first Street there was a boy named Arthur Ripley, older than I, taller, stronger, a very handsome fellow, with blue eyes and curling hair, very bright, and seemingly very good-natured, whom I had admired privately from the moment I had first seen him. He, however, had taken no notice of me; and so we had never got especially well acquainted, until one day I chanced to hear him speak a few words of French; and his accent was so good that I couldn't help wondering how he had come by it.

“Say, then, Ripley,” I demanded, in the Gallic tongue, but with Saxon bluntness, “how does it happen that you speak French so well? Your pronunciation is truly extraordinary.”

“And why not?” he retorted. “I have spoken it since my childhood. My grandmother—the mother of my father—was a French lady.”

“Hold,” cried I. “Really? And so was mine.”

Thereupon we fell into conversation. We got on famously together. From that hour we were intimates. I was admitted into Ripley's “set,” which included all the nicest boys of the school; and Ripley invited me to his home, which, with its beautiful pictures and books and furnishings, and general air of comfort and refinement, struck me as the loveliest place I had ever set my foot in, and where his mother and father made me feel instantly and entirely at my ease. They talked French to me; and little by little drew from me the whole story of my life; and when I had done, “Ah! my poor little one,” said his mother, with a tenderness that went straight to my heart, “how thy lot has been hard! Come, let me kiss thee.” And, “Hold, my little man,” said his father. “You are a good and brave boy, and I am glad that my son has found such a comrade. Moreover, do you know, you come of one of the most illustrious families not only of France, but even of Europe? The la Bourbonnaye are of the most ancient nobility, and in each generation they have distinguished themselves. At Paris there is an important street named for them. A Marquis de la Bourbonnaye won great celebrity as an admiral under Louis xv.; another, his son, I believe, was equally renowned as a royalist general during the revolution.”

“Yes, sir,” I put in, delighted at his familiarity with the history of our house; “they were the father and the grandfather of my grandmother.”

“But I had supposed that the family was extinct. You teach me that it survives still in the person of your Uncle Florimond. I am content of it.”

Arthur Ripley and I became as intimate as only boys, I think, can become. We were partners in tops, marbles, dÉcalcomanies, and postage stamps. We spent the recess hour together every day. We walked home together every afternoon. We set out pleasure hunting almost every Saturday—now to watch or to take part in a base-ball match, now to skate in Central Park, now to row on the Harlem River, now to fish in the same muddy stream, where, to the best of my recollection, we never so much as got a single bite. He was “Rip,” to me, and to him I was “Greg.” We belonged, as has been said, to the same set at school; at college we joined the same debating society, and pledged ourselves to the same Greek-letter fraternity.

He was the bravest, strongest fellow I ever knew; a splendid athlete; excelling in all sports that required skill or courage. He was frankness, honesty, generosity personified; a young prince whom I admired and loved, who compelled love and admiration from everybody who knew him. In the whole school there was not a boy whom Ripley couldn't whip; he could have led us all in scholarship as well, only he was careless and rather lazy, and didn't go in for high standing, or that sort of thing. He wrote the best compositions, however, and made the best declamations. I tell you, to hear him recite Spartacus's address to the gladiators—“Ye call me chief, and ye do well to call him chief who for twelve long years has met upon the bloody sands of the arena every shape of man and beast that the broad empire of Rome could furnish”—I tell you, it was thrilling. Ripley's father was a lawyer; and he meant to be a lawyer, too. So far as he was responsible for it, Ripley's influence over me was altogether good. What bad came of my association with him, I alone was to blame for.

Some bad did come, and now I must tell you about it.

He and the other boys of our circle were gentlemen's sons, who lived with their parents in handsome houses, wore fine clothes, had plenty of pocket-money, and generally cut a very dashing figure; whereas I—I was the dependent of a petty Third-Avenue Jewish shopkeeper; I had scarcely any pocket-money whatever; and as for my clothes—my jackets were usually threadbare, and my trousers ornamented at an obtrusive point with two conspicuous patches, that Henrietta had neatly inserted there—trousers, moreover, which had been originally designed for the person of Mr. Marx, but which the skillful Henrietta had cut down and adjusted to my less copious proportions.

And now the bad, if perhaps not unnatural, result of all this was to pique my vanity, and to arouse in me a certain false and quite wrong and improper shame of my condition. I was ashamed because I could not spend money as my companions did; I was ashamed of my shabby clothing; I was ashamed of my connection with Mr. Finkelstein; I was even a little ashamed of my intimacy with Rosalind Earle, for she too occupied a very humble station in the world.

And, as the obverse of this false shame, I became inflated with a pride that was equally false and wrong. I was as good a gentleman as anybody, if not better. I was the dependent of a Third-Avenue shopkeeper, true enough. But I was also the nephew of the Marquis de la Bourbonnaye. And I am afraid that I got into the habit of bragging a good deal about my relationship with that aristocratic person. Anyhow, my state of mind was not by any means a wholesome or a happy one; and by and by it bore practical consequences that were not wholesome or happy either.