It was a kind of a greenish,
mouldy cheese--Rocquefort! Yes, I believe that's it. I goes against a
little piece of it, and 'on the grave,' I like to fainted. Good!
Well, maybe you think it's good, but scratch your Uncle Dudley out of
any race where they enter Rocquefort.

"Yes; those were happy days for me. I hate to think about them now. I
had a good time while it lasted, though, and when they got me 'on the
tram,' I had to go to hustlin'. Well, here comes supper. Excuse me
now, while I get busy with a piece of that steak."

"But, Checkers," I expostulated, "I 'd like to hear the particulars.
You must have an interesting story to tell. And if you don't mind----"

"Oh, I do n't know. It's a hard luck story. I've had the hot end of
it most of my life. But you can see for yourself that I'm no 'scrub.'
I come from good people, and I 've lived with good people. I can put
up a parlor talk, or a bar-room talk. I've seen it all. But of course
when a fellow 'hits the toboggan,' he gets to going down mighty fast."

"I appreciate all that, my boy," I said, "or I should n't have brought
you here; and now if you will, while we are eating our dinner, give me
a little sketch of how it all happened."

"Well, there is n't very much to tell as I know of--at least, anything
that would interest you. To look back now it kind of seems as though
things just pushed themselves along.

"You see, in the first place, my father and Uncle Giles, his brother,
both fought in the war. Well, father got shot and came home a cripple.
About ten years afterwards I was born. Then father died, and mother
got a pension. She had some little money besides. After the war Uncle
Giles came back and hung around our house. He was 'flat,' and he
couldn't get a job. But he finally got some pension-shark to push a
pension through for him, and after that he 'pulled his freight' and
went to Baltimore to live. Mother and I stayed here in Chicago.

"Well, I went to school until I was twelve, and then I went to work in
a store. Mother's health was very bad, though, and at last we went
South on account of her lungs. We went to San Antonio, and at first
the air kind of did her good. I gets a job in a dry goods store, and
things are rollin' pretty smooth, when one night mother takes to
coughing, has a hemorrhage and dies.

"There's no use trying to tell you my feelings. Mother was dead and I
was alone. There was hardly a soul to come to her