Twenty Years of Hus'ling — Reading Notes

A Voice Between Apology and Farce

The narrative voice in Twenty Years of Hus'ling oscillates between the moralizing tone of the apology and the farcical energy of the anecdotes. In the opening, Johnston writes as a reformed man offering wisdom: 'for the sole purpose of stimulating those who may have been for years pulling hard against the stream.' But the excerpt from the dance scene shows a different register—quick, colloquial, and mischievous. The narrator describes the Doctor 'balancing around, with his plug hat on the back of his head, his spectacles hanging over his nose, and grasping his gold-headed cane.' The prose becomes breathless, piling up details: the soiled napkin mistaken for a handkerchief, the 'regular Highland-fling step,' the cross-eyed girl's dumbfounded stare. This shift from reflective to performative suggests a storyteller who enjoys the chaos he creates.

Pace and the Set-Piece Structure

The excerpts show a marked change in pace between the expository chapters and the comic set-pieces. The table of contents lists a rapid sequence of failures—'Collapse of a chicken deal,' 'Arrested and fined my last dollar'—each chapter a new venture that ends in disaster. But the dance scene slows time dramatically. The narrator's whispered lie about the Doctor's fits, the Doctor's escalating fury, and the floor-manager's patronizing response unfold in a series of quick exchanges and physical comedy. Johnston uses repetition for effect: the Doctor shrieks 'Fits? fits? What! I have fits?' and later 'Good ——! do I look like a man who has fits?' The pacing mimics a stage farce, with characters entering and exiting, misunderstandings piling up, and the narrator slipping away just before the climax.

Recurring Details: The Step-Father and the Fiddle

Two recurring details anchor the memoir's early chapters. The first is the step-father, introduced in Chapter I as 'a kind step-father' who helps the young Johnston raise a flock of sheep from a pet lamb. This figure reappears as a source of loans and stability, in contrast to the narrator's own reckless schemes. The second is the fiddle: Johnston's trip to New York ends with 'my return home with my fiddle,' a detail that suggests a musical or artistic side to the hustler persona. The excerpts do not reveal whether the fiddle becomes a plot point, but its presence hints at a desire for expression beyond commerce. These small, specific elements—the lamb, the fiddle, the repeated 'more help from Mr. Keefer'—give the narrative a texture of real memory, even as the comic episodes strain credibility.

Readers approaching Twenty Years of Hus'ling should attend to the gap between Johnston's stated purpose—to inspire the struggling—and the actual texture of his stories, which are often cynical, funny, and unresolved. The book rewards those who enjoy a narrator who is both the hero and the butt of his own jokes. Pay attention to the illustrations by W. W. Denslow, which likely amplify the comic tone. The memoir is best read not as a success manual but as a performance of failure, one that uses pace and voice to turn mishaps into entertainment.

Reading Johnston’s scrapes, I kept thinking how differently we’d be told to fail today—with charts and plans. There’s a quiet comfort in his haphazard honesty. It made me curious about the era’s more orderly side, so I lingered over Up To Date Business Including Lessons in Banking, Exchange, Business Geography, Finance, Transportation and Commercial Law — Edition Insights. Two worlds, the messy and the methodical, each oddly reassuring.