"
He did not state his case uncheerfully. "The rest of the world"
represented to him the normal condition of things.
"Most married men's a bit afraid to look an honest grocery bill in the
face. And they WILL come in--as regular as spring hats. And I tell YOU,
when a man's got to live on seventy-five a month, a thing that'll take
all the strength and energy out of a twenty-dollar bill sorter gets him
down on the mat."
Like old Mrs. Welden's, his roughly sketched picture was a graphic one.
"'Tain't the working that bothers most of us. We were born to that, and
most of us would feel like deadbeats if we were doing nothing. It's the
earning less than you can live on, and getting a sort of tired feeling
over it. It's the having to make a dollar-bill look like two, and
watching every other fellow try to do the same thing, and not often make
the trip. There's millions of us--just millions--every one of us
with his Delkoff to sell----" his figure of speech pleased him and he
chuckled at his own cleverness--"and thinking of it, and talking about
it, and--under his vest--half afraid that he can't make it. And what
you say in the morning when you open your eyes and stretch yourself is,
'Hully gee! I've GOT to sell a Delkoff to-day, and suppose I shouldn't,
and couldn't hold down my job!' I began it over my feeding bottle.
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