described? Read the reports on
child labor in the United States,--east, west, north, and south, it
doesn't matter where,--and know that all of us, profit-mongers that we
are, are typesetters and printers of worse pages of life than that
mere page of wife-beating on the Susquehanna.

I went down the grade a hundred yards to where the footing beside the
track was good. Here I could catch my freight as it pulled slowly up
the hill, and here I found half a dozen hoboes waiting for the same
purpose. Several were playing seven-up with an old pack of cards. I
took a hand. A coon began to shuffle the deck. He was fat, and young,
and moon-faced. He beamed with good-nature. It fairly oozed from him.
As he dealt the first card to me, he paused and said:--

"Say, Bo, ain't I done seen you befo'?"

"You sure have," I answered. "An' you didn't have those same duds on,
either."

He was puzzled.

"D'ye remember Buffalo?" I queried.

Then he knew me, and with laughter and ejaculation hailed me as a
comrade; for at Buffalo his clothes had been striped while he did his
bit of time in the Erie County Penitentiary. For that matter, my
clothes had been likewise striped, for I had been doing my bit of
time, too.

The game proceeded, and I learned the stake for which we played. Down
the bank toward the river descended a steep and narrow path that led
to a spring some twenty-five feet beneath. We played on the edge of
the bank. The man who was "stuck" had to take a small condensed-milk
can, and with it carry water to the winners.

The first game was played and the coon was stuck. He took the small
milk-tin and climbed down the bank, while we sat above and guyed him.
We drank like fish. Four round trips he had to make for me alone, and
the others were equally lavish with their thirst. The path was very
steep, and sometimes the coon slipped when part way up, spilled the
water, and had to go back for more. But he didn't get angry. He
laughed as heartily as any of us; that was why he slipped so often.
Also, he assured us of the prodigious quantities of water he would
drink when some one else got stuck.

When our thirst was quenched, another game was started. Again the coon
was stuck, and again we drank our fill. A third game and a fourth
ended the same way, and each time that moon-faced darky nearly died
with delight at appreciation of the fate that Chance was dealing out
to him. And we nearly died with him, what of our delight. We laug