Ben assured him that Poverty Barn should have his custom if business took him to Cleveland.
"To hell mit Boverty Parn! I preaks my neck from vone of der punks down comma, von night. Youst, when you go mit Cleveland, youst try der iron vorks an' shleep in der varm sandt!" kindly advised a gentleman having a pronounced Teutonic accent.
With much similar conversation, the meal drew to a close, the pans were removed, and the long table turned, bottom-up, against the wall; so that having banqueted off of the top side they might sleep on the bottom. The benches were then arranged across the room, and an elderly gentleman in black, with a clerical stock about his neck, (who was irreverently greeted as "Old Blue Blazes") entered at a side door, at the upper end of the hall, and proceeded to hold religious services. A more orderly and attentive congregation than the three hundred tramps composed, could not have been desired. This evening service was as much a part of the charity as the soup, and should it have been omitted they would have felt themselves defrauded. Cards, with the popular revival hymns of the day printed on them, were distributed through the crowd, and they lustily sang "Hold the Fort!" and "Pull for the Shore!"
The services concluded, preparations were made for retiring. Some of the fastidious (generally the most ragged) spread a newspaper on the floor to keep their clothes from getting soiled. Others contented themselves with scraping a place free from tobacco quids, and retired with their boots for a pillow.
There was one devotion peculiar to nearly all previous to closing their eyes. Everyone indulged in a good scratch! That great luxury that no unfeeling world could dispossess them of so long as they had their hands. And such scratching! Such contortions in getting way round at their backs; such grunts and sighs of satisfaction as both hands would be vigorously applied to opposite extremities! And then the inventions of genius—rubbing the back against a table leg while employing the hands elsewhere; and using a foot and both hands at the same time! And such courtesies—one scratching the unreachable portion of another, and three and four scratching each other in a row! Ben was about the only one present who did not scratch, and when a neighbor asked him to rub his back with the sole of his boot he could not refuse the kindness; so while he did not scratch himself, he aided others. Let him awake at what hour of the night he might, there was scratching going forward in some parts of the hall. Before daybreak, however, he found it congenial to commence upon himself, and it took the closest application and industry of search and slaughter, during the leisure moments of two succeeding days, to prevent him from becoming a confirmed scratcher.
CHAPTER XIII.
INTRODUCES THE EVANGELIST.
That night was a memorable one for Ben. It is not often that a man lies down to sleep, in full sight and hearing of three hundred of his fellow mortals; not to mention three hundred with such peculiar characteristics as separate the genus tramp from the rest of God's creation.
Ben reclined on a hand and elbow, wide awake, listening to the various noises proceeding from the sleepers. Snores, grunts, exclamations, curses, prayer, laughter and writhing proceeded from the bodies laboring under Dame Nature's mild anæsthetic. While so listening, a tall, thin figure approached him. It was a pale, long-faced young man, who had an air of dilapidated gentility about him, that was in unison with his intelligent, but care-worn, face. Noticing Ben's wakefulness, he said:
"I see that you, like myself, cannot sleep. What a pen of human swine it is!" and he seated himself beside our friend.