We named the cellar "Chicory Hall," and quickly succeeded in making it known.
The cellar consisted of two large rooms. Descending from Fourth street, about a dozen steps led to the bakeshop. Four small windows, grimed with impenetrable dirt, suggested the presence of light. The sunlight or cloudy sky found no token there. At night one dim flame of gas gave a sort of humorous weirdness to the filthy hole.
Adjoining the bakeshop was a dark apartment of the same size as the first room, used as storing place for the bags of bran, which were used in the manufactory of chicory. Shortly after establishing our headquarters at Chicory Hall, we chose the storage room as our sleeping chamber, making unwieldy couches from the heavy, unclean bags.
Certainly we had conveniences, a "front room" and a "bedroom," what more could we desire? And we appreciated it. Did not I, myself, spend ten entire days and nights in Chicory Hall without ever leaving it?
But while Tom Noseley's eighteen dollars a week, earned by his intermittent labors in baking chicory, were not to be despised as the substantial nucleus of our treasury, they were not enough to provide a little food and much drink for about six able-bodied prizefighters out of work. The regular staff included Jerry Slattery, the Limerick Terror; Mike Ryan, the Montana Giant; Tom Green and his brother, Patsy Green; Charlie Carroll and myself.
On Saturday, Tom Noseley's pay day, two or three of the staff appointed themselves a committee to accompany our host to the office and to prevent him from falling into other hands. His return was celebrated by feasting on many pounds of raw chopped meat and drinking many gallons of beer. Sunday morning found the exchequer very much depleted, containing, perhaps, just enough to reflicker our drooping and aching spirits by purchasing several pints of the vilest fusel oil, parading under the name of whiskey, ever manufactured.
Sabbath day, the day of rest, as appointed by the Master, was spent by us in quiet peace. That the peace was a consequence of the turbulent hilarity of the night before, and not a desire to live according to divine dictates is a mere detail.
At the beginning of our sojourn at Chicory Hall our feast of Saturday was generally followed by a famine until the next week's end. This was somewhat palliated by a happy inspiration of "Lamby," a character of the locality.
"Lamby"—no one knew him by any other name—had some mysterious hiding and sleeping place, but was infatuated with our Subterranean Bohemia and spent all his spare time—which practically was all his time, excepting the hours dedicated to sleep—with the Knights of Chicory Hall. He was a boy of about seventeen years of age, over six foot tall, of piping voice and full of most unexpected opinions and ideas.
There was good stuff in "Lamby," as in many of the East Side boys, who are, by environment and circumstances, led into evil, or, at least, useless lives. "Lamby's" heart was bigger than all his carcass. To be his friend, meant that "Lamby" thought it his duty to give three-fourths of all his temporary possessions to the cementing of this friendship.