The Days of a Man [11869 



other interests which fell suddenly in nominal value 

 — debts, however, remaining undiminished. 



Arriving at Ithaca, I put up for one night at the 

 Clinton House, — the first real hotel I had ever 

 visited, — which impressed me as both luxurious 

 and convenient. Next day, with a companion, I 

 took a room on Linn Street at the foot of the Uni- 

 Paying versity Hill. Here I got my first job, that of nailing 

 ^""^'^ lath on a neighboring house. Not long after I 

 ""^■^ removed to Cascadilla Place, a huge stone edifice, 

 formerly a sanitarium, then transformed into a 

 dormitory for professors and students. At Cascadilla 

 I paid my way by waiting on the table, a service 

 mostly undertaken by the boys. In this art I 

 acquired some dexterity; but as a whole it was the 

 most distasteful form of work I ever tried, a fact 

 which gave special zest to all my later experiments 

 in earning money. The following autumn I moved 

 to a two-story frame building owned (and put up) 

 by students in what was at that time called "Uni- 

 versity Grove," a little thicket just behind the spot 

 afterward chosen for President White's residence, 

 the first of a long series of professors' homes. 

 ''The Establishing ourselves in "the Grove," we at 

 Grove" ox^q^ fotmcd a boarding club, first in the little 

 f.^^^ farmhouse which was then the center of the Col- 

 SiTug" lege of Agriculture, later at the Grove itself. This 

 impecunious table venture was known in the early 

 days as "the Struggle for Existence," familiarly 

 "the Strug." The range of fare was not wide, but 

 our scanty earnings, mainly derived from digging 

 ditches and husking corn, scarcely warranted high 

 living. Nevertheless, on the door I twice posted 



C 52 3 



