names, madam. Buy something for the children; Good-bye, God bless
you!'"

Not the poor widow, alone, but even the big, able-bodied, hungry tramp
comes in often to share the drummer's generosity. A friend once told
me of a good turn he did for a "Weary Willie" in Butte.

Now if there is any place on earth where a man is justified in being
mean, it is in Butte. It is a mining camp. It rests upon bleak, barren
hills; the sulphuric fumes, arising from roasting ores, have long
since killed out all vegetation. It has not even a sprig of grass.
This smoke, also laden with arsenic, sometimes hovers over Butte like
a London fog. More wealth is every year dug out of the earth in Butte,
and more money is squandered there by more different kinds of people,
than in any place of its size on earth. The dictionary needs one
adjective which should qualify Butte and no other place. Many a time
while there I've expected to see Satan rise up out of a hole. Whenever
I start to leave I feel I am going away from the domain of the devil.

"One morning I went down to the depot before five o'clock," said my
friend. "I was to take a belated train. It was below zero, yet I paced
up and down the platform outside breathing the sulphur smoke. I was
anxious to catch sight of the train. Through the bluish haze, the lamp
in the depot cast a light upon a man standing near the track. I went
over to him, supposing he was a fellow traveling man. But he was only
a tramp who had been fired out of the waiting room. I wore a warm
chinchilla, but it made my teeth chatter to see this shivering 'hobo'
--his hands in his pockets and his last summer's light weight pinned
close around his throat.