"Bible!" I says "I never had one and if I had I couldn't read it-and I'm mighty glad on it that I can't read, its saved me that much, grumbling and jawing for reading over books when I ought to be slaving and working-ye are darn right I'm glad I was never learnt to read and write-I've had jawing enough for resting a bit now and then, let alone for the reading."

Seems like they think a feller ought to keep right on a-pegging, no matter how he feels. Well-maybe there'll come a morning when these old lame legs can't crawl out of the bed and then maybe they'll leave me be to rest a bit.

Work! Lord; the hard work I've always done! One day I was tugging away at the heavy old barrel churnchurning away with might and main and a lady visitor and the superintendent's wife comes along and I heard the lady-I ain't deaf like most of the old critters here and I heard her plain"Poor old fellow," she says, "I suppose he's really earned enough in his long life to buy the whole Infirmary!" And it's so too-I've worked enough to own every damned red brick of it.

"Maybe," the superintendent's wife spoke up in her sharp way, "but on the other hand he's been a county charge all his life for over seventy years the county has been taking care of him!"

"Care!" God, I could have spit in her face-CARE!-a change o' colored shirts and over-alls against bath-day-a snitch of skim-milk pieced out with water most likely to make it go round for the tea, and the superintendent's family and their relations and the hired help drinking cream and eating cream on everything on earth they can eat cream on, and us without a scrap of butter day in and day out, with maybe an egg or two at Easter and a bit o' chicken at Christmas and good luck to ye if you don't get what you don't want dumped on to your plate -you hankering for a good meaty thigh and getting a scraggy neck, and there ye are with that neck on your mind till Christmas again, unless there might be another bite with the "fair"day lunch.

"Fair" day!-now that's THE day for

me.

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That's the day I think on from one year's end to another-it beats Christmas for me. All year I save up my nickels and pennies when I get any for doing something extra for the hired help and have it to spend "Fair" day on the "Merry-go-round."

All my life long I've hankered to ride horses; but I never sat on one in my life only the superintendent's family and the hired help uses the horses-so all day at the Fair, off and on I ride up all my nickels on the horses of the "Merry-go-round."

And once some children pointed at me -"See that funny old man, he rides and rides!" they said. I saw them and I heard them-damn them-why should they have everything and I nothing?

Why is it? I can't see why some should have everything and others of us nothing. It gnaws when I think of it -there's always something to gnaw and hurt the neck o' the chicken to spoil even Christmas and the children pointing their fingers on "Fair" day.

But the day after the old soldier died they didn't point their fingers at methat was a great day-that "Fair" day

was.

The old soldier and his wife was here a good while. He had a pension but he was a little “off” in his head from being shot in the war so they made them come here and turn their pension in. But they always get him nice soldier clothes to wear out o' the money. The old woman died first, and then after while he took to his bed, and he was mighty thirsty all that last sickness, nothing would do him but fresh water out o' the well at the barn, and when I could, sometimes I'd go and get him some and so a week before he died, he had me to open a box he had and there was two white shirts in it and he kept one to be buried in and gave me the other.

I'd never had a white shirt till that. And he had two suits of soldier clothes. The new suit he'd never worn, he kept to be buried in, but the other suit he gave me-it fitted me fine-Lord! I scarcely knew myself that "Fair" morning when I looked in the dark window in the hall.

You can't see nothing but your head in the little glass in the Dormitory where we comb-but in the dark window in the hall you can see clear to your feet -I looked like the soldier I'd like to have been if I'd had my way about some things. And when I was riding on the "Merry-go-round," there was the nicest little chap kept looking at me and I heard him whisper to his little sister"That's an old soldier-see his clothesI bet he's thinking how he used to ride horses when he went to war."

And I never told him no different-for if it wasn't true it ought to have been by good rights-so I let it go. But I believe that was the best "Fair" day I ever had-I mind of earning five nickels that year and I had a big time riding that day.

If only it would come oftener-"Fair" day. A year seems a long time to wait -it does so. Every little while I ask them, "How long is it to Fair time?" When you are looking ahead it seems so long and when you look away back, it seems so short. It doesn't seem so very long ago that I was a kid with jet-brown hair-they said I was a pretty baby— yes, they did.

And I could talk as good as anybody till that time they turned the hose with ice cold water on me.

The way it was, I had been hoeing in the field with the men the day before, till I was near fit to drop, and this morning when they got ready to go, one of the hoes was missing, and they blamed it on to me, hiding it so I wouldn't have to go to the field again. And when I wouldn't tell where it was (I couldn't, for I didn't know; all I knew was that I put mine with the rest the night before) then they stood me up in the extra big reservoir tank in the cellar and turned the hose on me, and when I didn't tell they kept it turned on till the tank was full up to my neck-and then here come the old chicken-woman with the hoeshe'd found it where the superintendent's kid had dug fish-worms for bait the night before and like he always did, he left it right where he used it. They took me out then, but I couldn't talk, my teeth just shivered and chattered and

they do yet when I try to talk. I've stuttered ever since.

I was dreadful sick after that and they was pretty scared thinking I'd die-and the old chicken woman had let it out, so some of 'em knew what ailed me.

Maybe 'twould have been better if I had died then; 'twould have saved me a pile of hard work and more jawing than I can remember.

I say what's the use of living anyway, if you can't ever do anything that you want to or can't ever have any of the things you want-what's the use? I say. Damn it all!

It does make me laugh sometimes to hear the preachers that come out sometimes of a Sunday afternoon fat smooth slick-looking fellers like the calves in the Spring that take all the new milk except for the superintendent's family and leave us without half enough to go around, that's what they make me think of, talking about what a blessing it is to have such a nice peaceful retreat to be in! I don't see where the treat comes in and peaceful! Lord-I wish 'em all the good luck to have to come here and live and see what it's like that's what I wish on 'em-if it's so good why shouldn't they take their turn enjoying it-Humph!

I reckon 'twould be with them as it was with the old chap who stood up by the power-house one noon and slashed his throat from ear to ear. I suppose that's what makes that ball o' fire hang there o' nights like a big lantern hung on nothing. Many a night I've watched it over the spot where the old man's blood ran into the ground where he fell down.

I don't know whether you'd call that ball o' fire a ghost or not-but the old soldier used to say there was always liable to be ghosts where folks had killed themselves, and there's other things round here queerer than that ball o' fire -and God knows there's a many killed themselves rather than live here any longer.

I don't know how 'tis-maybe some can see more than others. But anyway there was a boy here once he was as

tall as a man but not very strong, growing so fast. So they put him in as night watch. And every hour he had to make the rounds of the barns and building and yard to see that everything was all right. And long about two o'clock one night he came runing into the cellar where one of the barn-men slept and called him up -he said the boy was as white as a sheet.

"You'll have to finish the watch," he told the man-"I can't-I'll never go out in that yard again at night. I've seen the most horrible things that a man ever saw -I've got to get to bed!"

man

He was that scared he could scarcely speak above a whisper, and the went with him into his room and he went in and locked the door and the man went out and finished the watch and he didn't see nor hear nothing-not a thing!

But the next day when they climbed over the transom to see what was the matter-they found the boy just as he'd dropped down in the bed with his clothes on-dead! He was plumb scared to death with whatever it was he saw out there in the black night-I don't want ever to see what he saw. I've never seen much-but what I did see was good and plenty for me.

'Twas the man on the stairs that I

saw.

One of the queer things about him was that if you SAW him you never heard anything-but if you was where you couldn't see him you would always hear him. They that slept near by that stairs would hear him come tromp, tromp up the steps about half way and then stop-never go up nor down-just stop right there-part way up. But I saw him.

The old chicken-woman was better than some of 'em to me when I was a lad and I used to turn to of an evening sometimes and help her when she pared the potatoes for the cook at night. As I sat there in the cellar kitchen a-helping, all of a sudden she gave me a nudge with her elbow and I looked up-there he was! What there was of him-a black haired, black whiskered, broadshouldered fellow, but all there was to him as we could ever see, was that head

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and shoulders that seemed to float part way up the stairs and then 'twas gone -went out just like a candle when you blew it out. There wasn't a single sound as it went up them steps and yet as I said if you happened to be in another room you'd hear that tramp, tramp, tramp up them few steps--without a sign of legs or feet to tramp with as you could see. And I've seen it often enough. And 'twan't nobody at all that I'd ever seen, and the old chicken-wo!nan said he must have been there before her time.

Then there's the old lady in an old fashioned black dress that parades around the halls in the old women's part. Those that don't happen to see her, can hear her go pat, pat, pat in her stocking feet. And there's the thing that comes in the corner of the old women's dormitory where that one hung herself to the bedstead with a sheet. You can hear that flouncing around there like it was knocking the chair over, and when they get up to see, so they say, everything is all quiet and everything in place; but the minute they get back to bed it begins again.

And the ghosts ain't all like folks either one is a big black bird that flutters into the barn-men's room in the cellar and perches himself or herself on the bed-post-it's the room where the idiot girl died that got cooked to death in the bath tub when another foolish girl turned the boiling water on her. The old barn-man says that you ain't hurt 'em when they was alive they won't hurt you any. And he's got used to the bird now he says so he don't pay no attention to it. But 'twouldn't be me that would want to sleep there-but I suppose it's with him about the bird as it is with me with the bed-bugs-I've got so used to them that they can gnaw on me all they want to and they don't keep me awake-Lord! I don't mind bed-bugs but I tell you what I do draw the line on and that's-RATS!

Dead or alive I don't want no truck with RATS!

Rats is mighty curious critters. They are so! And ther's always been an awful

many 'round here I'd think there would be more of 'em come back as haunts but I never heard tell of but one and that's the rat without legs that crawls over the old bureau in one of the women's rooms. You wouldn't get me to sleep in that room-nor stay in it either. I don't want no truck with rats dead or aliveno, sir!

I can't tell the time o' day by no clock but I can guess it straight enough and I know that when them rats gets a notion of going some place they come every night at just the same time-yes, they will! And if they gets a bite and taste of human flesh and blood there's no keeping 'em away. No matter how bright a light you keep burning they'll watch beside your bed till you get sound asleep and then they'll go at ye.

I mind now of that bed in the corner where the women said old "Sawmill" used to sleep. They used to call her that because she snored like a sawmill whistle. Well, a rat got after her and bit a couple of times on her finger. And after that she got sent away. So they puts this here sick woman in her bed. And Lord! she hadn't been there long when one night about nine o'clock she let out a screech that brought everybody a-flying. Seems she had taken a drink o' milk and dozed off to sleep and the first thing she knew something bit clean through her upper lip. But when she screeched and raised up Mr. Rat let go.

He'd put four teeth clear through her lip though. And everybody said it was a wonder he hadn't torn her whole. lip clean away.

Well after that, they kept a light burning but the rat would come every night at just the same time and watch for her to go to sleep-she'd hear him-she was too scared to sleep - and when she would peek over the edge of the bed she could see him and then he'd walk away. But the third night the superintendent got a whack at him-'twas a big gray wharf rat as big as a half grown kitten -yes, sir, I draw the line at rats. I've got used to mice running over my bed and the bed-bugs and the flies and the

cockroaches-although I must say them pale white fellers do make me squamish especially when they turn up at breakfast cooked in my oatmeal. But Lord! Flies and cockroaches ain't a patchin' to what we have had in our victuals. Take it before we got that new thing to set on the range when they used to cook our meat in the big iron kettle in the arch made for it-it used to set there of course all night.

'Twas supposed to be covered up but anyhow one time a snake creeps in and gets stewed up with the corn beef. There always was a big nest of adders down there in the cellar, but I guess it wasn't none of them. I guess 'twas just a common snake, cause it didn't kill none of us that eat out of that batch of meat. Another time we get rat mixed in—and that didn't kill us neither-but as I said I can stand the other things so long as it isn't rats! I can't abide rats nohow, dead or alive, raw or cooked.

God! Talk about hell! If there's a worse one than I've lived in all my life -it will be a bad one all right. But I notice this, that most of 'em here seem mighty glad to drop out of this when their time comes.

Of course there is some that do hate mortal bad to be planted up there in that moving patch in the medder.

You see they fence off a patch up there in that medder and when the patch gets full they just pull up the fence and take up another patch to bury in and mow over the other.

Lord! What a hay crop they get off that medder! They've gone over the whole medder now so much they're getting to be two and three deep and the grave digger hits into the old graves every now and then and some don't like the idea much-but me-damn it, what do I care? I say the more the merrier. I've got used to sleeping in a dormitory same as I've got used to the biting of the bugs.

And the worms-Gosh darn 'em! Let 'em gnaw-I reckon when it comes to that, I'll be asleep-too sound asleep to care or know.