When he thought of the next year's work at fifty a
month and when he looked at the horde of competing Bachelors of
Science in which he was pocketed, he whitened a bit.
"I must get out of the ruck," he said to himself. "I must get a
specialty. I must do some more preparing.
He began to perceive how long it takes the modern man to grow up,
intellectually and financially. He began to perceive what a
tedious road he must travel before he could arrive at
maturity--and Mary!
But he had pluck. "I'll really prepare," he said, "and then I'll
really make good."
A western university offered a scholarship of $500 a year, the
holder of which would be free to devote himself to a certain
specified technical subject. John tried for the scholarship and
got it, and spent a year chasing electrical currents from the
time when they left the wheels of street cars to the time when
they eventually sneaked back home again into the power-house,
after having sported clandestinely along gas mains and water
pipes, biting holes into them as they went.
It was a good subject, commercially. At the end of the year he
was engaged as engineer by a street-car company which was being
sued by a gas company for allowing its current to eat the gas
company's property.
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