The Iron Puddler: My Life in the Rolling Mills and What Came of It

t." All the schoolboys who were not Welsh delighted in teasing us by applying the uncomplimentary nick

I was their native guide and porter. They had me all blacked up like a negro minstrel, but this wasn't a funny show, it was a drama of mystery an

ed by an actor of the "troupe," set up a hot pot to boil my bones in. I was bound hand and foot, while the cannibals, armed with spears, danced around me in a heathen ceremon

pears into me. Some of the supers jabbed me pretty hard,

gain they jabbed me, and I was so ma

ig? Him-ya

breathless with

t a g

into a whirlwind roar:

joke. The horror and suspense had been so great that when it broke w

cries: "A horse, a horse; my kingdom for a horse," the supers in the army were clattering their swords on the opposing shields in a great hubbub and sho

with him under salary, and the local boys who made good were faking like the professionals. The whole thing was a cheat and I had not caught on. I was too serious-minded to think of faking. But several of the boys

s for auction sales, I always got the job. Every nickel that rolled loose in the town landed in my pocket and I took it home to mother. Mother was my idol and what she said was law. One night I heard the band playing and started down-town. Mother told me to be sure to be in bed by nine o'clock. I found that a minstrel show had been thrown out of its

in bad company. It would have been all right for you to have stayed at

I had seen the best part of the show, as in t

pree & Benedict's were the first minstrels I ever saw. I marched in their parade and carried the drum. George Evans (Honey Boy)