ay from his home and follow him
out on the road; had trained him into making a living for both; had
taught him first to drink, then to like and last to crave strong liquor,
and although he treated the lad as a master would his slave, he gave him
daily a regular allowance of diluted alcohol, which caused his young
victim to quickly forget all desire to return to his home and his
parents as there he could not secure the dram he yearned.

Their conversation was interrupted by one of the grown hoboes, who,
acting as cook, called all hands to "dinner". This dinner, which was
another mulligan, was placed in the center of the table in the same pot
in which it had been cooked, and each member of the gang, just as if
they were still camping about a hobo fire in the woods, by means of a
small wooden paddle pulled as much of the mulligan as he desired, onto a
tin plate, that had never been touched by dishwater, but had only been
scraped since the day it arrived at the rooms.

During their meal, also before they commenced to dine and after they had
finished, in fact all the time except when they were sleeping, a "human
chain" was kept busy fetching from the slum saloon on the ground floor
of the building a steady stream of "growlers" filled with beer and
diluted, sweetened alcohol, which passed as "whiskey", and returning the
empty tin cans for further supplies, as not the small rent of the rooms
but the large and steady thirst of their inmates made it very profitable
for the dive keepers to lodge this class of human perverts.

After they had finished their dinner the two filth-laden beds, the
benches, the table and even the slime covered floor became sleeping
places for the satiated tramps and their road kids, and gradually as
their cigarettes burned low and their coarse conversation lagged, all of
them, greatly assisted by the strong drink they had swallowed, dozed
away.

All of them--with the exception of James McDonald, who had not yet
sunken to the sodden level of these brutes in human forms who lay
scattered about the two rooms, dead to the world in maudlin sleep,
proving themselves to be living models of every stage of the decaying
influences of hobo life, from men whose countenances had been turned
into bloated visages down to the pale faces of the younger boys who had
just commenced to feel the curse of the lives which they had been forced
by these jockers to lead.

While Jim sat amongst them upon an empty upturned so