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The most of boys run away from home at ten or twelve years of age, but I waited till I was sixteen. I don’t know that I should have gone even then, if I had not happened to hear my old mother talk about setting me up on my own hook in the grocery way. The grocery way! — only think of that! I resolved to be off forthwith, and try and establish myself in some decent occupation, without dancing attendance any longer upon the caprices of these eccentric old people, and running the risk of being made a genius of in the end. In this project I succeeded perfectly well at the first effort, and by the time I was fairly eighteen, found myself doing an extensive and profitable business in the Tailor’s Walking-Advertisement line.

I was enabled to discharge the onerous duties of this profession, only by that rigid adherence to system which formed the leading feature of my mind. A scrupulous method characterized my actions as well as my accounts. In my case it was method — not money — which made the man: at least all of him that was not made by the tailor whom I served. At nine, every morning, I called upon that individual for the clothes of the day. Ten o’clock found me in some fashionable promenade or other place of public amusement. The precise regularity with which I turned my handsome person about, so as to bring successively into view every portion of the suit upon my back, was the admiration of all the knowing men in the trade. Noon never passed without my bringing home a customer to the house of my employers, Messrs. Cut & Comeagain. I say this proudly, but with tears in my eyes — for the firm proved themselves the basest of ingrates. The little account, about which we quarreled and finally parted, cannot, in any item, be thought overcharged, by gentlemen really conversant with the nature of the business. Upon this point, however, I feel a degree of proud satisfaction in permitting the reader to judge for himself. My bill ran thus:

Messrs. Cut & Comeagain, Merchant Tailors.
To Peter Proffit, Walking Advertiser, Drs.

JULY 10. — to promenade, as usual and customer brought home… $00
25
JULY 11. — To do do do 25
JULY 12. — To one lie, second class; damaged black cloth sold for
invisible green……………………………………….. 25

JULY 13. — To one lie, first class, extra quality and size;
recommended milled satinet as broadcloth…………………. 75

JULY 20. — To purchasing bran new paper shirt collar or dickey, to
set off gray Petersham………………………………. 02

AUG. 15. — To wearing double-padded bobtail frock, (thermometer 106
in the shade)……………………………………… 25

AUG. 16. — Standing on one leg three hours, to show off new-style
strapped pants at 12 1/2 cents per leg per hour…………. 37 1/2

AUG. 17. — To promenade, as usual, and large customer brought (fat
man)…………………………………………….. 50

AUG. 18. — To do do (medium size)…………….. 25

AUG. 19. — To do do (small man and bad pay)……. 06

TOTAL [sic] $2 95 1/2

The item chiefly disputed in this bill was the very moderate charge of two pennies for the dickey. Upon my word of honor, this was not an unreasonable price for that dickey. It was one of the cleanest and prettiest little dickeys I ever saw; and I have good reason to believe that it effected the sale of three Petershams. The elder partner of the firm, however, would allow me only one penny of the charge, and took it upon himself to show in what manner four of the same sized conveniences could be got out of a sheet of foolscap. But it is needless to say that I stood upon the principle of the thing. Business is business, and should be done in a business way. There was no system whatever in swindling me out of a penny — a clear fraud of fifty per cent — no method in any respect. I left at once the employment of Messrs. Cut & Comeagain, and set up in the Eye-Sore line by myself — one of the most lucrative, respectable, and independent of the ordinary occupations.