“Of course I know you can’t, for I know you’re poor like me, but so many times when I thought about the boy I thought that maybe you and your mother might raise him just the way I would have done; and then your mother was always so good to all of us. I remember how she used to raise the little geese down along the canal if anything happened to the old goose; don’t you remember about that? My, but them was fine times, wa’n’t they? Of course if you could do it I don’t know but the alderman would help you; anyhow he’d get free books and clothes off’n the county when he went to school. How are politics up in the ward? Is he goin’ to run again? I never hear anything only what I get out of the papers and they’re all against him, but I think he’ll show ‘em yet. Wish I was out so I could help. But I must go on with what I brought you to hear. I’m goin’ to tell you the whole story just exactly as it is, and you know that I wouldn’t tell you a lie tonight with what they are goin’ to do in the mornin’. I can’t make you understand unless I commence clear at the beginnin’, but I know you won’t mind, seein’ it’s my last time.” II You know I was born in Chicago and never was out of it but once until the night it happened. I don’t know anything about my father and mother except what my aunt told me. You know she raised me, and I can’t make any complaint about the way she done it. I was real small when I went to live with her. She stayed all alone down on the canal. I guess you knew me when I was livin’ with her. She worked hard, but, of course, ladies of that kind don’t get much. She used to go over to the south side to do washin’ and to clean houses, and things like that, and sometimes when I was small she took me along. They were awful nice houses where we went. That’s how I got to know so much about the way rich people live. When I got bigger, she used to send me to school. I was pretty steady in school and got clear up to the sixth grade. I know it must have been awful hard for her to send me the way she earnt her money, but she seemed to think as much of me as if I’d been her own boy. She could have got along better, but every time she got five or ten dollars laid up it seemed as if there was a funeral of some of the neighbors and she had to club in and hire a carriage, and that took her money almost as fast as she could earn it.