week for spending money. This was embarrassing riches.
"I never did figure out how to spend the whole of that dollar," he says. "I really had no use for it. My board and lodging were paid and the clothes I had were good enough for the shop. I never have known what to do with money after my expenses were paid—can't squander it on myself without hurting myself, and nobody wants to do that. Money is the most useless thing in the world, anyhow."
His life now settled into a routine eminently satisfactory to him—a routine that lasted for nine months. From seven in the morning to six at night in the machine shop, from seven to eleven in the evening at work with a microscope, repairing and assembling watches, then home to bed for a good six hours sleep, and back to work again.
Day followed day, exactly alike, except that every one of them taught him something about machines—either steam engines or watches. He went to bed, rose, ate, worked on a regular schedule, following the same route—the shortest one—from the boarding-house to the shops, to the jeweler's, back to the boarding-house again.
Before long he found that he could spend a part of his dollar profitably in buying technical journals—French, English, German magazines dealing with mechanics. He read these in his room after returning from the jeweler's.
