the appetite grows by what it feeds upon, says the proverb, and this is indubitably true of extra work. no matter what the auxiliary business may be, or how sorely it may press upon the over-burdened body and mind, it gradually becomes a necessity, reckoned upon as an essential part of the income, and impossible to be done without. that such work is an evil of the first magnitude cannot be gainsaid by any thinking man. unless of course it be, as sometimes happens, in the nature of a recreation, but even then what home life can the man have who is absent at work from breakfast time until nearly midnight? and what justice can he do his legitimate employer, who after all has the best right to his chief energies.

it may be said that if men were only paid a sufficient wage for the work they do during the day they would not seek evening employment, but such a statement would be very difficult to prove, since what is sufficient for one is not for another. and some men have a mania for work, begrudge themselves necessary sleep and food time, not because they need the money, but because they want it. the best that can be said for the practice is that it is far better than spending every evening in the vicious atmosphere of a saloon bar or public billiard-room, as so many workers do under the plea of recreation. but both are bad for the man practising them, making him prematurely old, and robbing him of all real enjoyment of life.

and yet how great is the excuse for the poorly paid clerk, who, having married and seeing his children coming all too quickly, is at his wit's end to know how to meet his ever growing expenses upon a non-expanding salary. i know for a fact that an enormous majority of the married clerks and salesmen of london live the life of slaves to those whom they love, toiling ever with one end in view, the comfortable maintenance of their dear ones. in literature, save the mark, they are held up to scorn and ridicule, the clerk and the "counter jumper" being taken as fair game for every smart pen, and even giants of the quill like mr h. g. wells do not scruple to draw such a hideous caricature of a splendid solid class as kipps. a monstrous exception if ever there was one to the great rule that these hardly entreated workers are fit to hold their own in any society, and as far as their work is concerned need not fear comparison with any.

to resume, as far as i am personally concerned, i found that even the trifling amount that i was able to add to my income by my infrequent sales of fancy goods for monthly payments, became absolutely necessary to me, and i craved too for some means of adding thereunto. i answered many advertisements, but they were all of the canvassing or touting order, and i felt that i could much easier starve than do that. why, i always found it a dreadful task to go on board a ship, and ask if they wanted any hands, to offer myself for hire! and that compared to the door to door canvassing is ridiculously easy. however, i was fortunate enough to get a job now and then to write up some firm's advertisement books, and so utilise the holidays i was allowed, but could not enjoy. this, and addressing envelopes at 3s. 6d. per thousand (i believe it is now done for 1s. 6d.), brought in a little valuable money, and improved my handwriting too. and still i craved for more. for one thing my seafaring habit of early rising clung to me so, that i simply could not remain in bed even on the dark mornings of winter after six o'clock, while in summer i was often out and about at three, enjoying the freshness of the young day, but lamenting that i could not put this leisure time to some presently profitable use. it was the same in the evening. beyond the open-air meetings on sunday and thursday, i had no recreations, no places of amusement. i could not read all the time, and although i walked fully ten miles a day to and from my work i had abundant energy still available.

now among my many deficiencies i was always painfully conscious of a lack of mechanical genius, or even aptitude. as before noted, i could not drive a nail without bending it, or turn a screw without burring the head. yet one day it chanced that i stood in the shop of an acquaintance of mine watching him make picture-frames, and the thought occurred to me that i could learn to do likewise, and thus perhaps utilise my spare time, and earn a little money into the bargain. thenceforward i was a frequent visitor to him, and my questions were many, but, such was my shyness that i never asked for a practical lesson.

while in this absorbent frame of mind a canvasser called at our office with some rather good steel engravings for sale. they were in monthly parts of three in paper portfolios with descriptive letterpress, and were entitled the "imperial gallery of british art." price five shillings per part, the series to be completed in sixteen parts. as i looked at the beautiful pictures, for, in spite of worn plates and retouching, many of them were beautiful, a scheme sprang to being in my brain. why should i not subscribe for two sets of engravings, frame them myself, and sell them on my monthly payment system? in about five minutes i had decided that i would venture, and had signed a document burdening[pg 81] me with the payment of ten shillings monthly for sixteen months.

after this, i suppose it is useless for me to say that i have or had no speculative instinct, since i thus determined upon so slight a prospect to mortgage such a considerable sum out of my income. but i think it must have been some long dormant flair for business which thus suddenly materialised. however that may be, i was for the time being possessed by my scheme, and frequented the shop where my friend was always making frames more assiduously than ever. i plied him with questions innumerable, all of which he answered very readily, seeing in me a good prospective customer for material in order to carry out my hobby, as he supposed it to be, and never even dreaming that i might be a possible business competitor.

i afterwards found that amateur picture frame-makers when properly encouraged make exceedingly good clients to the professional, whose aim it should be to encourage them by all the means in his power to make their own frames. because it is almost certain that the amateur will spoil far more material than he uses, and that his friends to whom he shows his work with pride will make mental notes of his great inferiority to the work of the professional, and determine never to have any home-made frames themselves. this attitude of the professional towards the amateur is an exceedingly profitable one, and pervades a[pg 82] great many trades, where it is recognised that the man with a hobby is a sort of bubbling well from whence the judicious fosterer of his client's most amiable weakness may draw an ever-increasing profit.

of course i made mistakes at starting, which cost me far more than i could afford, mistakes which i should not have made had i possessed any mechanical genius whatever. but i had what was better, an imperative necessity to succeed. you remember the story of the cow climbing the tree? it was exactly my case. there was no question of my learning to frame pictures, i had to. but for that i know should have flung down my tools and upset my glue-pot early in the game, vowing solemnly that to learn such a business was impossible at my time of life and as a side issue. but i did not, because i dared not, and after spending about six times their value in moulding, and forty times as much in hard, almost despairing work, i at last emerged from the struggle with two framed pictures.

looking back now i am amazed at even that moderate measure of success. for we only had three rooms, and i had two children. consequently my only workshop was the apartment which served us as kitchen, dining-room, and living room. the pembroke table, all rickety as those abominations always are, was my bench, and not infrequently capsized with all my litter of work upon it. of the usual appliances for the work i had scarcely any. for instance i have often, to their great delight, used my two children for a press—that is to sit on the board in order to keep newly pasted down engravings or photographs from cockling up. and if when putting the back into a frame i accidentally touched the glass with the point of a brad, hearing at once the ominous click which told me i had lost sixpence, the price of the square of cheap glass, my children's hilarity was hushed in a moment as they saw the almost despairing look in my eyes, and the haggard expression on my face.

but i am getting on too fast. so much depends upon the point of view, so relative are our joys or sorrows to our circumstances that i doubt whether columbus upon first beholding that will-o'-the-wisp-like light upon san salvador was more elate than i when i first beheld the two finished frames which were the work of mine own hands. true i had bought the moulding, and the gold or gilt slip. true i had bought the ready cut mount from another tradesman, and the squares of glass had been cut to my measurements by another, but mine was the hand that had, after much bungling and patching and besmearing of thick glue, achieved those frames. i felt that i could not weary of looking at them. mine was the joy of creation, however lawlessly assumed. upon rising at five the next morning, before dressing i paid a visit to them for another admiring survey, and a wondering retrospect as to whether it was really i who had succeeded in producing two such works of art. of course i had nothing to compare them with, but that was the merest detail, it troubled me not at all.

i was all impatience to get to the office with them, nor, although i am the least optimistic person alive, could i feel any great amount of trepidation as to whether they would be favourably received or not. it was a long and weary walk across the park from kilburn to westminster, and my hands were blue with the cramping cold through carrying my precious pictures, but i cared nothing for that. i was for the time being satisfied with myself. and yet as i drew near the office where my amateur work would be submitted to the shrewd if not unkindly judgment of my fellows, and i should learn once for all whether in the city man's phrase there "was money in it," i had hard work to keep my spirits up. fortunately i did not know what the odds were against me, a blissful ignorance which has saved many a struggler from collapse of dread before the fight has begun.

it is just possible that my work of totalling and meaning massive columns of figures, mechanical and monotonous as it had become, suffered that morning from utter lack of any ability on my part to think of what i was doing. but at last the luncheon interval of three quarters of an hour came, and having[pg 85] bolted my usual dinner of bread and cheese, i began my tour of the various rooms with my work. i sold my pictures to the first man i showed them to at a good profit on the usual terms of five shillings a month, but he very kindly allowed me to tote them all round the office, by which means i secured orders for six more. better than that i heard words of praise to which i had almost always been a stranger, praise of my work, at which i was far too gratified to inquire whether those who uttered it were competent critics, or were trying to get my wares a little cheaper, or on a little easier terms. it was a day to be marked with a white stone, and i find it impossible now to recall any definite idea of the multitudinous schemes of infinite pettiness which that day's success hatched in my brain. i can only say that in their prospective wealth of a few shillings extra a week, they were just as important, i was just as earnest in considering them, as any millionaire manipulator of stocks and shares, even though he looks for more tens of thousands from other people's labour than i looked for units from my own.

behold me then launched as a (vide my cards printed soon after) "carver, gilder, and picture-frame maker. clients visited at their own residences. advice upon all art subjects gratis; estimates free!" nevertheless i found it anything but plain sailing. at almost every turn i came up against some problem that would have given me no trouble had i served a year in a bona fide frame-maker's shop. mostly i got over or round the difficulty somehow by myself, for i grew more and more diffident of asking for instruction at the shop where i bought my moulding and et ceteras. but i was steadily improving in my work, steadily learning more and more of the details of the business, and gradually acquiring more tools suitable for the work. it is often scornfully said to the amateur, who is lamenting his inability to do better because of the want of proper tools, that a "bad workman always blames his tools." that may be true, but it is certainly not truer than that no regular workman would attempt to commence a job with the tools that the average amateur possesses. bad or good as the result may be, that there is any result at all from amateur work proves the possession of what all are agreed that the workman is always the better for, a love of the work for its own sake, and not at all from any hope of reward for his achievement outside of the satisfaction of his own innate desire for perfection.

i was now much happier. i cannot conscientiously say that i loved the new work for its own sake, but i had never enjoyed the possession of a hobby except reading and open-air preaching, and i was as i have said far too poor to indulge my tastes even in these pursuits to the full. but i was certainly interested in pictures and their frames. i was both surprised and delighted to find that i actually had some mechanical[pg 87] skill after all, and i never felt quite satisfied that my work was as well done as possible. by which of course i mean that i was always striving to do it better; not only, i can safely declare, because of pleasing a customer, but for the great delight of admiring the work of my own hands before i delivered it over to its owner.

moreover, i found to my deep gratification, that my circle of acquaintances or i may say even, friends, which had been exceedingly small, was now being constantly enlarged. nearly every new customer i obtained became interested in the man beyond his work, and this intercourse though it undoubtedly took up a great deal of time was very pleasant. before long i was adding a few shillings regularly every week to my income, every one of which represented a great deal of work and scheming and persuasion; shillings that were well and faithfully earned, if ever shillings were. i did most of my work in the morning before going to the office, for after office hours i was handicapped by the fact that i had to go to the city to buy my mouldings and mounts, or to make long journeys with the finished product.

this gathering together of the material that i used was one of the chief drawbacks to my progress. i could not of course lay in a stock; first, because i had no capital; secondly, because i had no room to store it; and thirdly, because, owing to the enormous variety of patterns, i could never tell what i should want a stock of. of course i early learned to guide my client's taste in the direction of the easily obtainable (and profitable to me) patterns for obvious reasons, but if a customer had seen a certain pattern and required it, i never tried to persuade him out of it, but did my very best to satisfy him. here i found another enormous difficulty. i did not know what to charge! there was no one of whom i dared ask the question, for it will be quite easily understood that in all trades there must be intense jealousy and dislike of an outsider coming in by a side entrance and cutting into the business. i got some help from the price-lists of the great stores, finding that i could make a very respectable profit, as i considered it, by charging about twenty-five per cent. less than they did. but that only helped me a little way, because i was continually confronted by the cheap frames made by the gross and sold by the drapers and fancy goods people at a few pence and some farthings each, less in fact than i could buy the materials for in the making of one frame.

so i groped blindly along, sometimes making a fair profit on my labour, sometimes after two or three days' hard work emerging with about what i started with because of unforeseen difficulties. i may have undersold the legitimate operators in the same line, but if so it was entirely due to ignorance on my part—i would never willingly spoil any man's market, unless of course as in some monopolies prices needed reduction in the interests of truth and honesty.

the writing of the last three words of the preceding sentence has suddenly brought before me the necessity of a word or two of explanation. i have not the slightest intention in these chapters to be dictative. still less do i wish to write a clumsy tract. and yet i find upon looking back upon the last few pages that i am in great danger of being accused of a smug and disgustingly hypocritical trumpeting forth of my virtues. from such a peril i desire to guard myself if possible. and i feel that i can only do so by stating definitely that although of course i claimed to be a christian man, my actions with regard to my work did not seem to me to spring from any desire to follow a certain code of moral laws, but to do to others as i wished they would do to me. at my proper work at the office i know i was often indolent and careless, and pre-occupied with my own affairs when i ought to have given my best abilities to the duties for which i was paid, the reason (not the excuse) being, that i never could take the slightest interest in it. but in my private business outside the office i did always try to give the best possible value for the money i received, and i had an absolute horror of overcharging anybody.

moreover, on certain occasions when i had to pay others to do what i could not do myself, and based my proposal for payment on the profit i expected to make, i have several times, on finding that my profits were[pg 90] larger than i had expected, voluntarily increased the payment to my helper. not, i affirm, because of any deep-seated desire to be just as well as kind, but, because it was the easiest way to quiet some inner impulse driving me in the direction of justice. this is not a matter of virtue, it is a matter of temperament. there is to me something diabolical, infernal, in the idea of "doing" anybody, of getting the better of them in a business deal, of binding men down to serve you for a pittance upon which they can hardly live, and making yourself a fortune by their labour. and i believe that a faithful servant who puts love for you as the employer into his or her work is valuable beyond all payment, but that fact should never hinder the recipient of such service from paying as liberally as he can, not caring a hang for the laws of political economy.

dear me, how far this kind of thing does lead one to be sure. but i have the most vivid recollection of those reflections in that strenuous time, and they gave point and edge to my remarks made on sunday morning at kensal green cemetery gates, to the immense audiences of men waiting there for william the fourth to open. i preached the doctrine of christian socialism as i saw it, as different from the naked and unabashed socialism of the keir hardie type, as light is from darkness, a social law of love and duty towards my neighbour, whether he be rich or poor. and this was a great and splendid compensation, even when as often happened, i, having laid out my last few shillings on friday for materials wherewith to make frames in the hope of getting paid for them on saturday, found that i was left with only a few pence to procure that sacrament of the londoner, the sunday's dinner.

however hard those times now seem to look back upon, i can very plainly see how much of pleasure and good training there was in them, compensations of which i then thought little. but i cannot help seeing also how helpful a few business-like habits would have been. i cannot say that i had a rooted objection to keeping accounts, i only know that i never did keep them except in my head. and consequently i grew to trust my memory for everything, which in business, however small, is i now know fatal. yet i know, too, that had i been managing anybody else's business, i should have been a scrupulous book-keeper. blamable in the last degree this constitutional aversion of mine from putting down what i had spent and how much i had earned from that spending. also, for another confession, though i was in theory anything but an optimist, in practice i acted optimism. i never could feel sure of my monthly government pay, until i had actually cashed the cheque, yet in the face of demands which it seemed miraculous that i should ever be able to satisfy i was cheery, even confident, that, as dickens so scornfully puts it, "things would come round."

now i must close this chapter, already overlong,[pg 92] but before i do so i must just say that at this time i drank nothing but water or tea, did not smoke, never paid a penny for recreation, and wore my clothes till i dared wear them no longer. and yet i was, with a steady salary of £2. 2s. a week, abjectly poor!