The Portygee by Joseph C. Lincoln — Read

The next morning, with much the same feeling that a convict must experience when he enters upon a life imprisonment, Albert entered the employ of "Z. Snow and Co., Lumber and Builders' Hardware. " The day, he would have sworn it, was at least a year long. The interval between breakfast and dinner was quite six months, yet the dinner hour itself was the shortest sixty minutes he had ever known. Mr. Keeler had not yet returned to his labors, so there was no instruction in bookkeeping; but his grandfather gave him letters to file and long dreary columns of invoice figures to add. Twice Captain Zelotes went out and then, just as Albert settled back for a rest and breathing spell, Issachar Price appeared, warned apparently by some sort of devilish intuition, and invented "checking up stock" and similar menial and tiresome tasks to keep him uncomfortable till the captain returned. The customers who came in asked questions concerning him and he was introduced to at least a dozen citizens of South Harniss, who observed "Sho! " and "I want to know! " when told his identity and, in some instances, addressed him as "Bub," which was of itself a crime deserving capital punishment.

That night, as he lay in bed in the back bedroom, he fell asleep facing the dreary prospect of another monotonous imprisonment the following day, and the next day, and the day after that, and after that -- and after that -- and so on -- and on -- and on -- forever and ever, as long as life should last. This, then, was to be the end of all his dreams, this drudgery in a country town among these commonplace country people. This was the end of his dreams of some day writing deathless odes and sonnets or thrilling romances; of treading the boards as the hero of romantic drama while star-eyed daughters of multi-millionaires gazed from the boxes in spellbound rapture. This. The thought of the star-eyed ones reminded him of the girl who had come into the office the afternoon of his first visit to that torture chamber. He had thought of her many times since their meeting and always with humiliation and resentment. It was his own foolish tongue which had brought the humiliation upon him. When she had suggested that he might be employed by Z. Snow and Co. he had replied: "Me? Work HERE! Well, I should say NOT! " And all the time she, knowing who he was, must have known he was doomed to work there. He resented that superior knowledge of hers. He had made a fool of himself but she was to blame for it. Well, by George, he would NOT work there! He would run away, he would show her, and his grandfather and all the rest what was what. Night after night he fell asleep vowing to run away, to do all sorts of desperate deeds, and morning after morning he went back to that office.