What trivial things bring about misunderstandings among friends. A mere nothing at all will start a quarrel in the Death-Chamber. We had cookies for Sunday dinner, “the kind mother used to make,” all dotted over with dried currants. She gave them to me when I was a good boy: she gave them to me incessantly. Shorty replaced the currants with dried flies, and sent them in the twilight to Benjamin with his compliments. Benjamin was in a dark cell, it was a dark day; Benjamin—my pen refuses to write it. I shall never be hungry again as long as I live, when I think of what happened. “I doan think much of dem currants,” said Ben. Shorty replied, “No-a-currant—heap a—” My pen again refuses its task. No; I cannot tolerate the thought, can you? Don’t ask me to write that word, and then I need not repeat Benjamin’s reply, for Ben’s reply was _awful_ to hear. This started the feud, and a little pleasantry of Ben’s not long afterwards added kerosene to the flame. Benjamin bided his time. One evening he challenged Shorty to a game of checkers, for a paper of chewing tobacco a side; best two games in three, the winner to take all. Now in the Death-Chamber each of us had made a checker-board, and the squares of each board were numbered alike; so, when an important match is made, we can follow the game as the combatants call off the moves by numbers to each other. It is just like a chess match “by cable,” and we are almost as far away from each other, although in the same room. The stakes were put up in the keeper’s hands. Shorty won the first game, Benjamin the second, Shorty the third, and took the tobacco. Shorty was jubilant; he declared that “Ben knew nothing from the game what he is about.” It became strangely silent in Benjamin’s cell. Benjamin was waiting until Shorty should regale himself with the victor’s spoils. For worlds Ben would not have lost a word of Shorty’s remarks. The noises which proceeded from “little Italy” later were worth waiting for. There were two dead mice hidden away in the interior of that package of tobacco. “How does yer like dem kurrents?” asked Ben. “Doan yer be afeared to chaw dem, dey’s perfectly ripe.” They were. No more presents were exchanged after that. It is sad when friends lose confidence in each other. Shorty spoke a language of his own. It was English in sound and accent, but the grouping of the words was according to his own sweet will. For Shorty the rules of syntax had no terrors. One day he told me his story. “I did was from Italy six year. All the time mostly work the railroad on. So much big, heavy carry ties. That don’t make me any never mind. I get the mon. Ah! that is altogether something—three hundred dollar. I will go home. Ah! a prettyful of a girls is there to marry.” Then Shorty told me how he came to New York to take the steamer. Here he met some friend who invited him to the Italian colony across the river in Jersey.