decided to try a scheme I had worked over for hours. "Keep close to
me, now, Tim," I said, as I led him to a drugstore at the corner of
Grand Street and the Bowery.

"Sir," I said to the clerk, "you are unaccustomed to giving credit, I
know; but perhaps you might suspend your rule for once and trust us
to the amount of five cents?"

"You don't talk like a bum," he said, "but you look like one."

I thanked him for the compliment to my language, but insisted on my
request.

"Well, what is it?" asked the clerk with somewhat of a sneer.

"I am hungry and thirsty. I have looked for work all day and have
utterly failed to find it. Now I have a scheme and I know it will
work. Oxalic acid eats away rust. If I had five cents' worth, I could
earn a dollar--I know I could."

He looked curiously at me for a moment, and said with an oath:

"By--! I've been on the Bowery a good many years and haven't been sold
once. If you're a skin-game man, I'll throw up my job!"

I got the acid. I played the same game in a tailor-shop for five
cents' worth of rags. Then I went to a hardware store on the Square
and got credit for about ten cents' worth of brickdust and paste. I
took Tim by the arm and led him across the west side of Chatham
Square. There used to be a big drygoods store on the east side of the