It was in this lodging-house I first saw Buffalo. He was presented to me the night I took the picture of my little vegetable-peddling friend, Edward, asleep on the front bench in evening school. Edward was nine years old and an orphan, but hard at work every day earning his own living by shouting from a pedlar's cart. He could not be made to sit for his picture, and I took him at a disadvantage--in a double sense, for he had not made his toilet; it was in the days of the threatened water-famine, and the boys had been warned not to waste water in washing, an injunction they cheerfully obeyed. I was anxious not to have the boy disturbed, so the spelling-class went right on while I set up the camera. It was an original class, original in its answers as in its looks. This was what I heard while I focused on poor Eddie: The teacher: "Cheat! spell cheat." [Illustration: BUFFALO.] Boy spells correctly. Teacher: "Right! What is it to cheat?" Boy: "To skin one, like Tommy----" The teacher cut the explanation short, and ordering up another boy, bade him spell "nerve." He did it. "What is nerve?" demanded the teacher; "what does it mean?" [Illustration: NIGHT-SCHOOL IN THE WEST SIDE LODGING-HOUSE. EDWARD, THE LITTLE PEDLAR, CAUGHT NAPPING.] "Cheek! don't you know," said the boy, and at that moment I caught Buffalo blacking my sleeping pedlar's face with ink, just in time to prevent his waking him up. Then it was that I heard the disturber's story. He _was_ a character, and no mistake. He had run away from Buffalo, whence his name, "beating" his way down on the trains, until he reached New York. He "shined" around until he got so desperately hard up that he had to sell his kit. Just about then he was discovered by an artist, who paid him to sit for him in his awful rags with his tousled hair that had not known the restraint of a cap for months. "Oh! it was a daisy job," sighed Buffalo, at the recollection. He had only to sit still and crack jokes. Alas! Buffalo's first effort at righteousness upset him. He had been taught in the lodging-house that to be clean was the first requisite of a gentleman, and on his first pay-day he went bravely, eschewing "craps," and bought himself a new coat and had his hair cut. When, beaming with pride, he presented himself at the studio in his new character, the artist turned him out as no longer of any use to him. I am afraid that Buffalo's ambition to be "like folks," received a shock by this mysterious misfortune, that spoiled his career. A few days after that he was caught by a policeman in the street, at his old game of "craps." The officer took him to the police court and arraigned him as a hardened offender. To the judge's question if he had any home, he said frankly yes! in Buffalo, but he had run away from it.