I wish all Kansas City could have seen the expression of hope that lit up that starving lad’s face. My sharing with him was something more substantial than the sermon or inexpensive advice usually handed to the starving man.
“Well,” I said, “we’re partners now, and we may as well be broke as to have only this, so let’s go and eat it.”
I led him away from the neighborhood of the City Hall and the City Jail, and the Board of Health and the Helping Hand Mission, and out of all that black and heartless region, to where we could get a clean meal without being poisoned by some cheap slum eating house. We talked as we went along, and I asked him where he had spent the previous night.
“Down in the yards in a freight car, and it rained nearly all night. The car leaked, and at about two or three o’clock in the morning it grew very cold. I suffered a lot. I was afraid of being arrested, for we’re not allowed to sleep in the yards. But the watchman was decent and let me stay until daylight.”
I had heard of the “Helping Hand” Mission Lodging House, known to those who are forced into it as the “House of Blazes,” and I asked him why he had not gone there.
“There was no room,” he replied.
Coming from the chop-house we went to an employment office, where we read upon the blackboard:
“Wanted—Fifty men in Oklahoma, $1.35 a day, free shipment.”
We stepped inside for further information and found that board would be three dollars and a half a week. The boy studied for a moment and then said:
“Let’s go.”