y obeyed. I was anxious not to have the boy disturbed, so
the spelling-class went right on while I set up the camera. It was an
original class, original in its answers as in its looks. This was what I
heard while I focused on poor Eddie:

The teacher: "Cheat! spell cheat."

[Illustration: BUFFALO.]

Boy spells correctly. Teacher: "Right! What is it to cheat?"

Boy: "To skin one, like Tommy----"

The teacher cut the explanation short, and ordering up another boy, bade
him spell "nerve." He did it. "What is nerve?" demanded the teacher; "what
does it mean?"

[Illustration: NIGHT-SCHOOL IN THE WEST SIDE LODGING-HOUSE. EDWARD, THE
LITTLE PEDLAR, CAUGHT NAPPING.]

"Cheek! don't you know," said the boy, and at that moment I caught
Buffalo blacking my sleeping pedlar's face with ink, just in time to
prevent his waking him up. Then it was that I heard the disturber's story.
He _was_ a character, and no mistake. He had run away from Buffalo, whence
his name, "beating" his way down on the trains, until he reached New York.
He "shined" around until he got so desperately hard up that he had to sell
his kit. Just about then he was discovered by an artist, who paid him to
sit for him in his awful rags with his tousled hair that had not known the
restraint of a cap for months. "Oh! it was a daisy job," sighed Buffalo,
at the recollection. He had only to sit still and crack jokes. Alas!
Buffalo's first effort at righteousness upset him. He had been taught in
the lodging-house that to be clean was the first requisite of a gentleman,
and on his first pay-day he went bravely, eschewing "craps," and bought
himself a new coat and had his hair cut. When, beaming with pride, he
presented himself at the studio in his new character, the artist turned
him out as no longer of any use to him. I am afraid that Buffalo's
ambition to be "like folks," received a shock by this mysterious
misfortune, that spoiled his career. A few days after that he was caught
by a policeman in the street, at his old game of "craps." The officer took
him to the police court and arraigned him as a hardened offender. To the
judge's question if he had any home, he said frankly yes! in Buffalo, but
he had run away from it.

"Now, if I let you go, will you go right back?" asked the magistrate,
looking over the desk at the youthful prisoner. Buffalo took off his
tattered cap and stood up on the foot-rail so that he could reach across
the desk with his hand.