BENJAMIN McNEIL MURDOCK
dream in which his father, having been arrested for stealing, was tried in the school-house yard, after dark, on a platform under the flare of innumerable grinning kerosene-torches. Before all the evidence was in it was Ben himself who was being tried, by the mathematical teacher; he was condemned to have his teeth pulled out; and he woke in a clammy fright, haunted by the fear that his father's thefts would be discovered and he would be discharged from the grocery.
He left Centerbrook in answer to a want advertisement for a bookkeeper in a New York news- paper. He went to work for the Perry-Felton Company. And for ten years nothing happened to him more exciting than a raise of salary. He made no friends. He had no companions. For a time he lived in a boarding-house, and then, in answer to another advertisement, he took a room in a flat with a childless German couple who spoke almost no English. He remained with them as long as he remained in New York. He talked to no one. He says he had an unpleasant feeling that people were never sincere; they said all sorts of things that they did not really think; you could see it in their eyes. He preferred to read, and he read chiefly newspapers. Then he developed a curious hobby that led him to read science.
One of the clerks at Perry-Felton's brought a popular "wire puzzle" to the office, and after every one else had failed to do it Murdock solved it
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