own gravity before it reached the place of unloading. Through
one of these we marched in, Adler and I, one summer morning with new
pickaxes on our shoulders and nasty little oil lamps fixed in our hats to
light us through the darkness where every second we stumbled over chunks
of slate rock, or into pools of water that oozed through from above. An
old miner, whose way lay past the fork in the tunnel where our lead began,
showed us how to use our picks and the timbers to brace the slate that
roofed over the vein, and left us to ourselves in a chamber perhaps ten
feet wide and the height of a man.

We were to be paid by the ton, I forget how much, but it was very little,
and we lost no time in getting to work. We had to dig away the coal at the
floor with our picks, lying on our knees to do it, and afterward drive
wedges under the roof to loosen the mass. It was hard work, and, entirely
inexperienced as we were, we made but little headway.

When toward evening we quit work, after narrowly escaping being killed by
a large stone that fell from the roof in consequence of our neglect to
brace it up properly, our united efforts had resulted in barely filling
two of the little carts, and we had earned, if I recollect aright,
something like sixty cents each. The fall of the roof robbed us of all
desire to try mining again....

Up the railroad track I went, and at night hired out to a truck farmer,
with the freedom of his hay-mow for my sleeping quarters. But when I had
hoed cucumbers three days in a scorching sun, till my back ached as if it
were going to break, and the farmer guessed he would call it square for
three shillings, I went farther. A man is not necessarily a
philanthropist, it seems, because he tills the soil. I did not hire out
again. I did odd jobs to earn my meals, and slept in the fields at
night....

The city was full of idle men. My last hope, a promise of employment in a
human-hair factory, failed, and, homeless and penniless, I joined the
great army of tramps, wandering about the streets in the daytime with the
one aim of somehow stilling the hunger that gnawed at my vitals, and
fighting at night with vagrant curs or outcasts as miserable as myself for
the protection of some sheltering ash-bin or doorway. I was too proud in
all my misery to beg. I do not believe I ever did.

There was until last winter a doorway in Chatham Square, that of the old
Barnum clothing store, which I could never pass without re