good while, but nobody knew till it got to be
too much for her ag'in. It was partly trouble, I will say, for my father
was weakly an' goin' with consumption, an' she was fond of him. But this
time there was no stoppin' her. She'd pawn everything: she's taken the
jacket off me in a winter's day an' sent me with it to the pawnbroker's,
an' I not darin' not to go. To the last minute my father did what he
could. I was six when he died, an' he'd dress me himself an' try to
keep me decent. She was drunk the very night he died, an' not a soul
near. I sat on the bed an' looked at him. 'Jack,' he said, 'hate whiskey
long as you live: it's killed me, an' it'll kill your mother. It's a
devil.'

"There was a saloon under us then. We had got lower and lower, for, fix
up as father might, there was never any surety he wouldn't find things
smashed or sold out; an' at last there wasn't anything to sell. An' when
he was gone I can't remember as I ever see her sober. I got to hate the
smell of it so it sickened me. It does now, though it was my trade to
sell the stuff, an' I never minded that.

"I lost track of her. I was a newsboy an' lookin' out for myself when I
was eight, an' sometimes I'd hunt her up, an' she'd hug me an' go on
over me if she wasn't too drunk; but mostly I didn't. I might ha' been
respectable enough, for I liked my work, but I got in with a set of boys
that had learned to pick pockets. It was good fun. I had quick ways, an'
the first time I ever hauled out a handkerchief I thought it about the
smartest game anybody could play. It's more for the excitement of it,
half the time, than from real native cussedness, that boys begin; an' I
didn't think one way or another. But the time come when I did think. I
was caught with fellows that had been up half a dozen times, an' because
I was little they sent me to the house of refuge.

"Now, I ain't goin' to say more'n I can help about that, for there was
one man I sha'n't ever forget. He's dead now, but he meant work with
them boys, an' he did it. I believe he loved 'em every one just because
they had souls. But what I do say is, that, far's I know, eight boys out
o' ten come out worse'n when they went in. Why not? They're mostly the
worst sort, an' it's a kind of rivalry amongst them which'll tell the
most deviltry. There ain't a trick nor turn you can't be put up to, an'
I learned 'em every one. I learned some other things too. We had to
study some, an' I was quick, an' I