My FRIEND, THE Tramp 75
passin' on yer honour's grounds, it's meself that
would hev laid down on the say shore and taken
the salt waves for me blankits. But its sivinteen
miles I've walked this blessed iioight, with nothin'
to sustain me, and hevin' a mortal weakness to
fight wid in my bowels, by reason of starvation,
and only a bit o' baccy that the Widdy Maloney
giv' me at the cross roads, to kape me up entoirely.
But it was the dark day I left me home in Milwau¬
kee to walk to Boston; and if ye'll oblige a lone
man who has left a wife and six children in Milwau¬
kee, wid the loan of twenty-five cints, furninst the
time he gits worruk, God'll be good to ye,"
It instantly flashed through my mind that the
man before me had the previous night partaken of
the kitchen hospitality of my little cottage, two
miles away. That he presented himself in the
guise of a distressed fisherman, mulcted of his
wages by an inhuman captain; that he had a wife
lying sick of consumption in the next village, and
two children, one of whom was a cripple, wander¬
ing in the streets of Boston, I remembered that
this tremendous indictment against Fortune touched
the family, and that the distressed fisherman was
provided with clothes, food, and some small change.
The food and small change had disappeared, but
the garments for the consumptive wife, where were
they ? He had been using them for a pillow.
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