The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1892-02-26
miscellaneous.
Jeff AND THE PAPER RAGS.

Youths Companion.
Perched high upon the uncushioned
seat of a rickety old tin-peddler's cart,
drawn by rickety old white horse,
was about the smallest specimen of a
boy that ever drove alone over New
England hills.
HE amt more'n ten years old, an
vary small O. his size, at tibet, -
thought old Mrs. Carter, when she
saw jeff pull up before her door, and
come nimbly down from his high
perch to barter his wares for her stock
of paper rags.
These rags were carefully saved by
the prudent housewife whenever she
cut out a roundabout for John Henry
or tier for Sarah Jane For the col
lection Jeff gave the least possible in
tape, soap, needles and tinware.
Many persons, twice as old and thrice
as heavy as jeff, might have envied
him his ability in bargaining and
making his way in the world.
Almost as long as he could remem-
Der jeff had driven about with his
father in this rickety old cart. The
peddler had no relatives with whom
he could leave the child. Thus Jeff
had been made acquainted with the
details of the business, from buying
auction lots of shOp-worn goods, to
selling the rags that were collected on
every trip.
There was one serious drawback to
the success of Jeff's father as ''trav-
elling merchant" He was a drunk
ard. During two or three days of
every fortnight he lay in a stupefied
sleep, while Jeff made short trip on
some by-road, or waited idly for the
return of his fathers senses.
From the last of these slumbers the
peddler did not wake up as usual.
jeff found himself alone in the world,
with the old cart and horse, and a
varied assortment of small wares.
Long familiarity with his fathers
way of doing business fitted him for
carrying it on, young as he was. He
never thought for a moment of doing
anything else, but turned the horses
head toward the road they both knew
well, and was soon driving a flourish
ing trade with the kindly farmers
wives about the country.
In those days paper rags were
saved more carefully than now, both
because rags brought higher prices,
and because people were more saving
was not long in getting his cart laden
with great bags, stuffed as full as they
could hold.
Jeff's father had always stored his
rags in an old barn at a certain Cor
ner." There his route met the routes
of two other peddlers, who stored
their rags with his. When large
quantity had been collected, they
were packed in agreat hayrick, whose
sides had been roughly boarded up,
and hauled to a paper-mill. Each
peddler kept track of the weight of
his own lot.
Jeff continued the practice after his
father died. So industrious was he i'll
getting over his route, and off on by
roads, that he usually had more rags
than either of the others.
On the first trip that jeff took to
the paper-mill after his fathers death
the other peddlers asked him to help
them in a plan for defrauding the
mill-owners. In matters of right
and wrong the boy had had little in
struction. The scheme seemed to him
a good joke, which would bring in
more money, and he agreed to do
what the men suggested.
Their custom, on arriving at the pa
per-mill, was to unload at back
door in an unfrequented yard. They
were furnished with a large basket
holding four or five bushels, which
they usually filled as full as possible
by tramping the rags as they were
heaped in from the cart. Then they
carried the basket in to the platform
scales, where one of the mill clerks
took the weight.
The basket was then emptied
through a scuttle at the side of the
scales into the great rag-heap in the
dark basement below.
The trick which the men resorted to
was this: AT each filling of the bask-
ct jeff stepped into it, and coiled up
in the middle when it was about half
full. The two men then heaped in
rags, and carried them in without
pressing them down. When weighed
the basket was emptied quickly down
the scuttle, jeff and all.
This was rather a rough-and tumble
experience for Jeff, but he had a soft
heap of rags to land upon, and was
not hurt in the least. He scrambled
quickly out, crawled through a base
ment window, and ran around behind
the building to get into the basket
again.
He was so small that his weight was
not noticed in such an enormous bas-
ketful of rags, especially as they were
not pressed down. Again and again
he passed over the scales, down
through the scuttle, and around by
the basement window.
This is what jeff told me MANY
years after he had ceased to sell him
self for rags. If he had continued in
definitely in that rascally practice this
story would never have been told and
jeff would have been found out and
sent to Jail sooner or later
Fortunately he came to see, after
awhile, that this fraud was bad and
mean business, even though it did
bring in more money. He had "gone
through the mill'' On three different
trips, and was riding around picking
up rags and selling tinware as usual,
when he began to understand what he
had been doing, and his conscience
pricked him little but this was not
enough to keep him from doing the
same thing when he arrived in the
back yard at the mill for the fourth
time
When he had gone down in the last
bask atful on this OCCASION ha uas