my age.  One morning there came a loud knocking at the door, which was followed by the entrance of two officers.  The dogs had got out and bitten a child, and the officers, knowing who owned them, had come to arrest Mullholland.  We were all surprised, for the officers recognized in Mullholland and the woman two old offenders.  And while they were dragged off to the Tombs, I was left to prey upon the world as best I could.  Again homeless, I wandered about with urchins as ragged and destitute as myself.  It seemed to me that everybody viewed me as an object of suspicion, for I sought in vain for employment that would give me bread and clothing.  I wanted to be honest, and would have lived honest; but I could not make people believe me honest.  And when I told who I was, and where I sheltered myself, I was ordered away.  Everybody judged me by the filthy shreds on my back; nobody had anything for me to do.

“I applied at a grocer’s, to sweep his store and go errands.  When I told him where I had lived, he shook his head and ordered me away.  Knowing I could fill a place not unknown to me, I applied at a butcher’s in Mott street; but he pointed his knife-which left a wound in my feelings-and ordered me away.  And I was ordered away wherever I went.  The doors of the Chatham theatre looked too fine for me.  My ragged condition rebuked me wherever I went, and for more than a week I slept under a cart that stood in Mott street.  Then Tom Farley found me, and took me with him to his cellar, in Elizabeth street, where we had what I thought a good bed of shavings.  Tom sold Heralds, gambled for cents, and shared with me, and we got along.  Then Tom stole a dog, and the dog got us into a deal of trouble, which ended with getting us both into the Tombs, where Tom was locked up.  I was again adrift, as we used to call it, and thought of poor Tom a deal.  Every one I met seemed higher up in the world than I was.  But I got into Centre Market, carried baskets, and did what I could to earn a shilling, and slept in Tom’s bed, where there was some nights fifteen and twenty like myself.

“One morning, while waiting a job, my feet and hands benumbed with the cold, a beautiful lady slipped a shilling into my hand and passed on.  To one penniless and hungry, it seemed a deal of money.  Necessity had almost driven me to the sign of the ‘Three Martyrs,’ to see what the man of the eagle face would give me on my cap, for they said the man at the ‘Three Martyrs’ lent money on rags such as I had.  I followed the woman, for there was something so good in the act that I could not resist it.  She entered a fine house in Leonard street.

“You must now go with me into the den of Hag Zogbaum, in ’Scorpion Cove;’ and ‘Scorpion Cove’ is in Pell street.  Necessity next drove me there.  It is early spring, we will suppose; and being in the Bowery, we find the streets in its vicinity reeking with putrid matter, hurling pestilence into the dark dwellings of the unknown poor, and making thankful the coffin-maker, who in turn thanks a nonundertaking corporation for the rich harvest.  The muck is everywhere deep enough for hogs and fat aldermen to wallow in, and would serve well the purposes of a supper-eating corporation, whose chief business it was to fatten turtles and make Presidents.