the livery stable, and we would have fun moving. But I don't want any
more fun. I know when I have got enough fun. Pa carried all the light
things, and when it came to lifting, he had a crick in the back. Gosh, I
never was so tired as I was last night, and I hope we have got settled,
only some of the goods haven't turned up yet. A drayman took one load
over on the west side, and delivered them to a house that seemed to be
expecting a load of household furniture. He thought it was all right, if
everybody that was moving got a load of goods. Well, after we got moved
Pa said we must make a garden, and we said we would go out and spade
up the ground and sow peas, and radishes, and beets. There was some
neighbors lived in the next house to our new one, that was all wimmen,
and Pa don't like to have them think he had to work, so he said it would
be a good joke to disguise ourselves as tramps, and the neighbors would
think we had hired some tramps to dig in the garden. I told Pa of a boss
scheme to fool them. I suggested that we take some of his shoe blacking
that is put on with a sponge, and black our faces, and the neighbors
would think we had hired an old colored man and his boy to work in the
garden. Pa said it was immense, and he told me to go and black up, and
if it worked he would black hisself. So I went and put this burnt cork
on my face, 'cause it would wash off, and Pa looked at me and said it
was wack, and for me to fix him up too. So I got the bottle of shoe
blacking and painted Pa so he looked like a colored coal heaver.
Actually, when Ma saw him she ordered him off the premises, and when he
laffed at her and acted sassy, she was going to throw biling water on
Pa. But I told her the scheme and she let up on Pa. O, you'd a dide to
see us out in the garden. Pa looked like uncle Tom, and I looked like
Topsy, only I ain't that kind of a colored person."

[Illustration: Uncle Tom and Topsy 098]

"We worked till a boy throwed some tomato cans over the ally fence and
hit me, and I piled over the fence after him and left Pa. It was my
chum, and when I had caught him we put up a job to get Pa to chase us.
We throwed some more cans, and Pa come out and my chum started and I
after him, and Pa after both of us. He chased us two blocks and then we
got behind a policeman, and my chum told the policeman it was a crazy
old colored man that wanted to kidnap us, and the policeman took Pa by
the neck and was going to club him, but