Let whoever reads this book remember that when your mother is gone, you have lost your best and truest friend next to God.

I was by this time about twelve years old, and the little money I had was soon gone; but I found a place as chore-boy in the Troy Museum or Theater, which was in charge of Joe Howard; and O, if I had even heeded the good advice which he and the tragedian, John R. Scott, gave me, I might have been a better boy. During this time, too, Charlotte Cushman, America's greatest actress, and Kate Denin, another eminent American actress, were good to me, and gave me good advice. I used to carry little

Cordelia Howard from the Mansion House to the theater. O, why did I not mind God, and see that he had raised up for me true friends?

The reason was, because the devil was my master, and he was determined that I should not see and know that these kind souls were my friends. The devil was my master. I had to obey him; he lived in me; he was stronger than I, and made me do his will.

I had two cousins in Troy, both boys, and one day as I was returning from an errand, bring

ing some guns and pistols to be used on the stage, I met these two boys. They said they were running away from home, and it did not take much urging on their part to get me to go with them. They had money, and I had guns and pistols; so we started West on the Erie Canal, and by the time we got to Lockport we had neither money, guns, nor pistols. The boys left me to take care of myself, and I went back to Troy by working my passage as driver on the tow-path. I walked.

I think I could preach a sermon to a lot of canal-drivers-such a sermon as they would listen to a good deal quicker than to a sermon from Talmage or Spurgeon, because I could speak to them in their own language: "And they were amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?" (Acts ii, 7, 8.)

This is the true way to preach the gospel; then every man can understand it; we must prove that we are not above them, but are one of them,— "Behold, he eateth with publicans and sinners."

Well, I got back to Troy, and in a few hours I had a boarding-house where people are taught to play checkers with their nose. I was tried and convicted, because I could not come any gush on the Troy officers. You see, they had come to know me so well. I was sent to the House of Refuge to stay until I was twenty-one years old. I was in there but nine months, for here fortune stood my friend again, and while there the officers took to me, and gave me the soft job of hall-boy.

After I was in the House of Refuge nine months, a farmer came along from New Jersey, and I was bound out to him. He took me home to his farm, which was a terribly stony one. I did n't like to pick stone very well, so I said "good-bye" to the farmer, and was gone before he knew it. Run away? Of course I did. That was about all I knew enough to do; and, like all tricky, dishonest people, I steered at once for my old haunts and companions.

Well, back to Troy I went. I was now fourteen years old. I go into all these little details because I want to tell what a blessed Savior I have found, and to do this I must tell how bad