"If I ever had a father, I never seen him, and if, I had a mother, I wish someone would tell me who she was. How can a feller be proud and stuck-up who ain't got no father and no mother, and no name only Joe? They calls me stingy 'cause I'm saving all the money I can, but I ain't saving it for myself—I'm saving it for Jessie."
"Is Jessie your sister?" I asked.
"No, sir; I ain't got no relatives."
"Perhaps, then, she is your sweetheart," I said.
Again he looked up in my face and said very earnestly, "Did you ever know a boot-black without any name to have an angel for a sweetheart?"
His eyes were full of tears, and I made no answer, though I might have told him I had found a boot-black who had a big, warm heart even if he had no sweetheart. Very abruptly he said:
"You came over on the boat; what kind of a land is it over across the river?"
"It is very pleasant in the country," I replied.
"Is it a land of pure delight, where saints immortal reign?"
Having just come from New Jersey where the infamous race track, and the more infamous rum-traffic legalized by law, would sink the whole State in the Atlantic Ocean, if it were not that it had a life preserver in Ocean Grove, I was hardly prepared to vouch for it being that kind of a land.