NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
had no place to sleep nights, and for months 
made his bed in a chicken-coop, unable to get 
enough money ahead to pay for regular lodg- 
ings. Occasionally, when work altogether 
failed, he was reduced to absolute want. It 
was his habit at such times to go to the village 
meat market, secure the refuse bones saved for 
dogs, and get from them what meat he could. 
He found steady employment at last in a 
small nursery at a beggarly wage. Not being 
able to hire lodgings, he slept in a bare, damp, 
unwholesome room above the steaming hot- 
house, where for days and nights at a time 
his clothing was never dry. He was passing 
through such privations as those through 
which, in the strange allotments of fortune, 
many another great man has passed. 
The constant exposure and lack of nourish- 
ing food made rapid inroads upon a not too 
strong constitution, and this, with overwork, 
brought on an attack of fever. A woman in 
the neighborhood, herself in straitened cir- 
cumstances, found him one day in such a criti- 
cal condition that she insisted on sharing with 
him the small portion of milk which she could 
afford to spare from the one cow that supplied 
12 
