This page has been validated.
LARRY RECEIVED TWO INTERESTING LETTERS
37
Ben? After I left Ben,—I got a ride on the train from Middletown to Albany,—I just struck the worst luck a boy could imagine. My hat was the first thing that went—the wind blew it from the train—and on the outskirts of Albany I encountered a bull-dog that tore my clothing nearly to bits. A tramp saved me from the bulldog, and I travelled with the tramp two days, when he obligingly walked off with my coat and all my money—forty-seven cents.
"How I got to Boston at last would fill a volume. I have been a farmhand, a glazier (put in two panes of glass for an old lady, who had the glass, but not the skill), a blacksmith (helped at a country smithy two days, when the regular helper came back), a florist (worked three days in a greenhouse, and got no pay, because I knocked a lot of pots down with a step-ladder), and a deckhand on a river steamboat. Now, at last, I am here in Boston, helping an old sailor, with one leg, that has a large news-stand (the sailor, not the leg). The sailor's name is Phil Newell, and he was all through the Civil War. You just ought to hear him tell about fighting and narrow escapes from the enemy! He knows all about the war between
