Miss McCartys got to having words with ‘Fighting Mary,’ about an old affair in which poor English was concerned, and the words got to blows, when Mr. Flanegan at the Blazers stepped in to make peace.  But the whole house got into a fight, and the lights were put out, the corpse knocked over, and the child (it was found dead in the morning) suffocated with the weight of bodies felled in the melee.  The noise and cries of murder brought the police rushing in, and most of them were dragged off to the Station; and the next day being Sunday, I wandered homeless and friendless into Sheriff street.  Poor English was taken in charge by the officers.  They kept him over Monday to see if any one would come up and claim him.  No one came for him; no one knew more of him than that he went by the name of English; no one ever heard him say where he came from-he never said a word about my mother, or whether he had a relation in the world.  He was carted off to Potter’s Field and buried.  That was the last of poor English.

“We seldom got much to eat in the Points, and I had not tasted food for twenty-four hours.  I sat down on the steps of a German grocery, and was soon ordered away by the keeper.  Then I wandered into a place they called Nightmare’s Alley, where three old wooden buildings with broken-down verandas stood, and were inhabited principally by butchers.  I sat down on the steps of one, and thought if I only had a mother, or some one to care for me, and give me something to eat, how happy I should be.  And I cried.  And a great red-faced man came out of the house, and took me in, and gave me something to eat.  His name was Mike Mullholland, and he was good to me, and I liked him, and took his name.  And he lived with a repulsive looking woman, in a little room he paid ten dollars a month for.  He had two big dogs, and worked at day work, in a slaughter-house in Staunton street.  The dogs were known in the neighborhood as Mullholland’s dogs, and with them I used to sleep on the rags of carpet spread for us in the room with Mullholland and his wife, who I got to calling mother.  This is how I took the name of Mullholland.  I was glad to leave the Points, and felt as if I had a home.  But there was a ‘Bottomless Pit’ in Sheriff street, and though not so bad as the one at the house of the “Nine Nations,” it gave out a deal of gin that the Mullhollands had a liking for.  I was continually going for it, and the Mullhollands were continually drinking it; and the whole neighborhood liked it, and in ‘Nightmare’s Alley’ the undertaker found a profitable business.

“In the morning I went with the dogs to the slaughter-house, and there fed them, and took care of the fighting cocks, and brought gin for the men who worked there.  In the afternoon I joined the newsboys, as ragged and neglected as myself, gambled for cents, and watched the policemen, whom we called the Charleys.  I lived with Mullholland two years, and saw and felt enough to make hardened any one of