The Coconino weekly sun., 1894-11-15
HOW sMlTHIE AVOIDED WORK.
He Ate the Biggest Dinner of His Life, but
 Never Went Back.

He Ate the Biggest Dinner of His Life, but
 Never Went Back.
 As to devices for swindling the kind hearted public there is an inexhausti- ble fund of ren,iniscence when tramps meet, and he seems to know something about the fraternity. Here is one of Smithie's adventures, he continues:
 You boys all know I have knack of lookin' fair an above board an talkin' kind O soft and re- pentant like when I want any thing. We'll, one day last winter I went out to Cambridge and bummed a breakfast at a house there East Bos- ton told me about. Then was thirsty, so went to another house and asked for some money l sized the woman up pretty quick and played the racket of bein' willin' an anxious to work bore down on it hard, you know. She was so stirred up by the yarn spun her that she gave me dime and in- vited me to come around again at five o'clock and get good hot dinner. She didn't get any monday meal, she said, cause she hadn't no kids and her hus- band, he worked so far away he couldn't come home. You'd "a laughed yourself tired and hungry to see how glad she was wanted work. To spare my sensitive feelin's she kept tellin' me as how her husband would find me some wood to saw or somethin' else to do when he got home, so needn't feel l was takin' charity.
 'Of course I was on hand at five o'clock. They made me wash my hands and set down to the table with them. Gee whiz! what grub That was just about the slickest dinner ever set my teeth into. I don't suppose they's more'n two or three O you blokes ever had night dinner; that's the kind this was, handed on in sec tions ccourses,' they call 'em) by a nig- ger wench. l may as well own up. felt powerful green myself along at first, and wished was eatin' alone sos not to give away what lot I was putin in. But they kep' pilin' my plate up to make me feel easy, and 'twan't long before clean forgot all my fine manners and waded in with both feet. Um-m-m! lean taste them orange fritters now!
 ''They got through eatin' before did, an set to work with their mouths plannin' jobs for me down cellar an out in the back yard. I felt my appe- tite slippin away from me, for seen I was billed to be laborin' man sure enough unless l sprung some bluff on 'em mighty spry. So, all to onct, l made like I was took with big collie. I squirmed an held on to my stomach and screwed up my face, until they was that frightened they laid me out flat on the lounge an run for the brandy bottle-real French stuff, mind yer, smooth enough to cut a figure eight on with skates.
 '''Poor man. they kep' sayin'; he must "a been half starved You see, they thought I had been hungry so long that square meal had done me up. played off l was easier after the brandy, as, in course, was; an when got strong enough to walk they gave me more brandy an money enough for lodgin'.
 ''I promised to call around in the mornin' an do the work if was well enough, but I want well enough, an hain't been we'll enough since. If Iany of you's got a hankerin' for the incest feed goin' can tell you how to find the house, an if you're cooney, like was, you won't have to lift your hand for the grub. Only you'll have to get up new game. Collie won't work in that house for some years to come, take it" "-N. Y. Independent.