Of the men coming in at the side door, a shoe merchant, a grocer, the
proprietor of a restaurant, and a telegraph operator interested Sam most.
Several times each day these men would appear, glance back over their
shoulders at the door, and then turning to the bar would look at Sam
apologetically.
"Give me a little out of the bottle, I have a bad cold," they would say,
as though repeating a formula.
At the end of the week Sam was on the road again. The rather bizarre
notion that by staying there he would be selling forgetfulness of life's
unhappiness had been dispelled during his first day's duty, and his
curiosity concerning the customers was his undoing. As the men came in at
the side door and stood before him Sam leaned over the bar and asked them
why they drank. Some of the men laughed, some swore at him, and the
telegraph operator reported the matter to Al, calling Sam's question an
impertinence.
"You fool, don't you know better than to be throwing stones at the bar?"
Al roared, and with an oath discharged him.
CHAPTER IV
One fine warm morning in the fall Sam was sitting in a little park in the
centre of a Pennsylvania manufacturing town watching men and women going
through the quiet streets to the factories and striving to overcome a
feeling of depression aroused by an experience of the evening before.
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