"
The speaker, George Fremont, a slender boy of seventeen,
with spirited black eyes and a resolute face, sat back
in his chair and laughed at the memory of that impecunious
time, while the others gathered closer about him.
Fremont was ostensibly in the employ of James Cameron, the
wealthy speculator, but was regarded by that worthy gentleman
as an adopted son rather than merely as a worker in his office
force. Seven years before, Mr. Cameron had become interested
in the bright-faced newsboy, and had taken him into his own
home, where he had since been treated as a member of the family.
"Went broke in the South, did you?" asked one of the group
gathered before an open grate fire in the luxuriously furnished
clubroom of the Black Bear Patrol, in the upper portion of a
handsome uptown residence, in the city of New York. "Go on and
tell us about it! What's the matter with the Tennessee river,
or the Rio Grande?"
"If you had no money, how did you get your houseboat?" asked
another member of the group. "Houseboats don't grow on bushes
down there, do they?"
"Oh, we had a little money," George Fremont replied, "but not
enough to take us to Chicago in Pullman coaches. The joint
purse was somewhere about $10. We built the houseboat ourselves,
of course."
"Must have been a strange experience, going broke like that!"
one of the others said. "Hurry up and tell us about it! I
believe it does a fellow good, once in a while, to get where
he's got to hustle for himself or go hungry!" he added,
glancing at the others for appreciation of the sentiment.
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