The 1,000,000 Bank-note When I was twenty-seven years old, I was a mining broker's clerk in San Francisco. I was alone in the world and had nothing to depend upon but my wits and a clean reputation, but these were setting my feet in the road to eventual fortune, and I was content. My time was my own after the afternoon board, Saturdays, and I was accustomed to spend a little time on a sailboat in the bay. One day, I ventured too far and was carried out to sea. Just at nightfall, when hope was about gone, I was picked up by a small ship which was bound for London. It was a long and stormy voyage, and they made me work for my passage without pay, as a common sailor. When I stepped ashore in London my clothes were ragged and shabby, and I had only a dollar in my pocket. This money fed and sheltered me twenty-four hours. During the next twenty-four I went without food and shelter. About ten o’clock on the following morning, seedy and hungry, I was dragging myself along Portland Place, when a child that was passing, towed by a nurse-maid, tossed a luscious big pear- minus one bite- into the gutter. I stopped, of course, and fastened my desiring eye on that muddy treasure. My mouth watered for it, my stomach craved it, my whole being begged for it. But every time I made a move to get it some passing eye detected my purpose, and of course I straightened up then, and looked indifferent, and pretended that I hadn’t been thinking about the pear at all. I was just getting desperate enough to brave all the shame, and to seize it, when a window behind me was raised, and a gentleman spoke out of it, saying: ‘Step in here, please.’ I was admitted by a servant, and shown into a sumptuous room where a couple of elderly gentlemen were sitting. They made me sit down. They had just finished their breakfast, and the sight of the remains of it almost overpowered me. Now, something had been happening there a little before, which I did not know anything about until a good many days afterwards, but I will tell you about it now. Those two old brothers had been having a pretty hot argument a couple of days before, and had ended by agreeing to decide it by a bet, which is the English way of settling everything.