breath away by his bluntness; he looked so honest and
sincere, so I simply replied, "Yes," and waited.

"Well then, I wants the job. See!"

"What's your name, youngster, and where is your home?"

"My name's Dick Durstine; I hain't got no home, no father, no mother, no
nothin', just me, and I wants to learn the tick tick business. It looks
dead easy."

This was really funny, but I liked his impudence, and, while I had no
intention of hiring him, I determined to draw him out, so I said:

"Where were you born, when did you come here, and do you know where any
of the crews live?"

"I was born in St. Louis; mother died when I was a kid, and Dad was such
a drunken worthless old cuss and beat me so much, that I brought up in a
foundling asylum. I come in here riding on the trucks of your mail train
about three weeks ago, and the fellers up in the roundhouse have been
lettin' me feed and snooze there. I know where all the crews live
exceptin' some of your kid glove engineers wot pulls the fast trains,
but I can soon find them out. Please give me the job, mister; I'm honest
and I'll work hard."

Something in his blunt straightforward way appealed to me and I
determined to try him. Handled right I imagined he would be a good man;
handled wrong, he would probably become a bright and shining light of
the _genus_ hobo. So I hired him, telling him his salary would be forty
dollars per month.

"Hully gee!" he exclaimed, "forty plunks a month! Well say! I won't do a
ting wid all dat mun; I'll just buy a road. Thank you mister, I'll work
so hard for you that you'll not be sorry you gave me the job. But don't
you forget that I wants to learn the tick tick business."

That night at seven o'clock he went to work, and it didn't take long to
see that he was as bright as a new dollar. He knew everything about the
division, knew all the crews and where they lived. Days went by and
still he held up his end and was a great favorite with all the force.
There was a local instrument in the office, and one of the operators
wrote the Morse alphabet for him, and ever after that he kept pegging
away at the key. He practiced writing and it wasn't many weeks before
he was getting to be something of an operator. I went out to the main
line battery room one evening to give some instructions to the man in
charge and there I discovered Master Dick with a battery syringe in one
hand and a brush in the other deeply engrossed in monkeying with the
j