The Truth about Vignolles

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AN HONEST LIVING earning of an honest living is a problem which most of us have to face and very often to endure, and my friend Vignolles, who for thirty adventurous years had beat the world in search of knowledge, had ever been handicapped by this irksome but inescapable necessity. It had led him into...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AN HONEST LIVING earning of an honest living is a problem which most of us have to face and very often to endure, and my friend Vignolles, who for thirty adventurous years had beat the world in search of knowledge, had ever been handicapped by this irksome but inescapable necessity. It had led him into strange places and strange callings; and though he had frequently enjoyed the former, especially when looking back on 'them, he was not so sure about the rest. He had put up with the one for the sake of the other on occasion. But a man who's single and not too old can always earn his keep anywhere. He had arrived at this conclusion, and, early in life, had adopted it as a kind of personal motto. It was his scroll, his challenge, and had he possessed a shield and coat of arms, these words would have been blazoned and proclaimed thereon. If a man's single and not too old. He re- peated the phrase this evening; and then he added as an afterthought: I 'd always taken that for granted till I ran into Saloniki. It beat me. Saloniki is the exception that proves the rule, and it's the capital of Macedonia. It's burnt down and rather off the map at present; but did I ever tell you how I tried it in the long ago before the war?'' he continued. Before the two wars, strictly speaking; before the rest of Europe had discovered it; when the Turk was its lord and master and wild men roamed the wilderness outside its ancient walls. Macedonia he exclaimed. What a place what an area of damnation the last place God made Vignolles had barely mentioned that country until this evening. I knew he had served there, gaining promotion and a decoration; but that had nothing to do with earning an honest living. We had dined together, he with me, or I with him?I forget which of the two had ...