Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880, page 139 by Various Authors
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e'd pawn everything: she's taken the jacket off me in a winter's day an' sent me with it to the pawnbroker's, an' I not darin' not to go. To the last minute my father did what he could. I was six when he died, an' he'd dress me himself an' try to keep me decent. She was drunk the very night he died, an' not a soul near. I sat on the bed an' looked at him. 'Jack,' he said, 'hate whiskey long as you live: it's killed me, an' it'll kill your mother. It's a devil.'
"There was a saloon under us then. We had got lower and lower, for, fix up as father might, there was never any surety he wouldn't find things smashed or sold out; an' at last there wasn't anything to sell. An' when he was gone I can't remember as I ever see her sober. I got to hate the smell of it so it sickened me. It does now, though it was my trade to sell the stuff, an' I never minded that.
"I lost track of her. I was a newsboy an' lookin' out for myself when I was eight, an' sometimes I'd hunt her up, an' she'd hug me an' go on over me if she wasn't too drunk; but mostly I didn't. I might ha' been respectable enough, for I liked my work, but I got in with a set of boys that had learned to pick pockets. It was good fun. I had quick ways, an' the first time I ever hauled out a handkerchief I thought it about the smartest game anybody could play. It's more for the excitement of it, half the time, than from real native cussedness, that boys begin; an' I didn't think one way or another. But the time come when I did think. I was caught with fellows that had been up half a dozen times, an' because I was little they sent me to the house of refuge.
"Now, I ain't goin' to say more'n I can help about that, for there was one man I sha'n't ever forget. He's dead now, but he meant work with them boys, an' he did it. I believe he loved 'em every one just because they had souls. But what I do say is, that, far's I know, eight boys out o' ten come out worse'n when they went in. Why not? They're mostly the worst sort, an' it's a kind of rivalry am