“You remember how we used to play around the canal in them days. It smelled pretty bad but we didn’t seem to mind it much. We used to sail boats and go in swimmin’ and catch frogs and do ‘most everything. There was quite a gang of us boys that lived there. It don’t seem as if any of ‘em ever amounted to very much. Most of ‘em are in the stock yards or switchin’ or doin’ somethin’ like that. The only ones that I can think of that growed up down there and amounted to anything is the alderman and Bull Carmody, who went to the legislature. They call both of ‘em Honor’ble, you know. I guess anybody is honor’ble who ever had an office or tried to get one. Us boys used to get arrested quite a good deal. Of course we was pretty tough, you know that. We was always in some devilment. All of us rushed the can and chewed tobacco; then we fought a good deal and used to play ‘round the cars. Some of the boys would break into ‘em; but I never stole anything in my life unless you count coal off’n the cars, and I don’t know how we could have got along in the winter without that. Anyhow I guess nobody thinks anything of stealin’ coal off’n cars. “But I don’t s’pose there’s any use goin’ over my whole history. I don’t know as it has anything to do with it anyway, only it kind of seems to me that I never had a very good chance and as if mebbe things would’ve been different if I had. “Well, you remember when my aunt died I had got to be about fourteen. Then I found a job out to the stock yards. I never liked that work; I used to see so much killin’. At first I felt sorry for the cattle and the hogs, and especially for the sheep and calves—they all seemed so helpless and innocent—but after I’d been there awhile I got used to seein’ their throats cut and seein’ blood around everywhere, all over the buildings and in the gutters, and I didn’t think any more about it. You know I stayed there quite a while. Then I went to work for the railroad company. First I was in the freight house unloadin’ cars. This was pretty rough, heavy work, but I didn’t mind it much; you know I was always kind of stout. Then I thought I’d like to work in the yards; it would give me more air and not be quite so confinin’. So I got a job as switchman, same as you. Well, you know all about that work. It ain’t the nicest thing in the world to be a switchman. Of course if they’d make the couplers all alike then there wouldn’t be so much danger; but you know when one of them safety couplers comes against one of the old kind that the boys call ‘man killers’ it’s pretty dangerous business. Then, of course, when a car is run down a switch and you have to couple it onto another car just as it bumps in, it’s kind of dangerous too. Of course, the rules say you must use a stick to put the link into the drawhead, but nobody ever uses a stick; you know all the boys would laugh at a feller that used a stick. There ain’t nothin’ to do but to go in between the cars and take hold of the link and put it in.