man to be envied, he thought.
Then suddenly, out of a clear sky, one day he received a note from his employer, the publisher, telling him that his services would not be needed after the following week. He was ousted from his comfortable job. His fine salary stopped. He had to give up his comfortable home. He had to move away from his congenial friends and neighbors. He looked upon that note from his employer which began all this change of circumstances for him as "bad" news, very, very bad news.
He had to leave New York, where he liked to live. He went wandering about the country, trying to make a living by writing, and trying to find a cheap place to live, because his earnings were small. Hard times came along, and the magazines to which he had formerly consistently sold his writings began to curtail their buying, and his market vanished. He got poorer and poorer. Every time one of his stories was declined by an editor who formerly bought his stories, he thought it was bad news. Every time he read a newspaper, he found statements about the hard times in it, and he thought that was bad news too.
He settled in a small town in up-State New York where he seemed to find conditions that suited his purposes. He was just beginning to get well started there in making friends, and was beginning to hope that he might weather the hard times there, because expenses were low, and that he might ultimately
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