The Bulls are coming!" he yelled, and dived into the woods. Coming up the path we could hear a dozen men running.

"This way, Buddy!" Red grabbed my arm, and pulled me into the bushes.

the bumpers. When she comes I'll help you. Now don't lose your nerve or you might get killed."

Soon the through freight came rumbling slowly along. I had no difficulty in catching the hand-guard and climbing up on to the bumper.

Red led me down a hill to a stream of water that was almost hidden by the undergrowth. "In you get!" he whispered, and together we jumped into the water, which was up to my arm pits. Hugging the steep and muddy bank we were completely hidden by the bushes. We stood in the water for over an hour, while the police searched the woods about us. Then we heard them say, "They must have beat it. Well, we've got two anyhow, and we'll get more to-morrow." Then they went away.

For several hours we walked along the country road, meeting only an occasional farmer, to whom I felt a superiority. Then we came to the outskirts of Hamlin Junction, and decided we had better wait until dark before going in.

When night came on we went to a restaurant and had a feed, then Red left me hiding among some box-cars on a siding while he looked the ground over. When he returned I could see that he was worried.

"This place is full of Bulls, an' we gotta watch out," he said. "There's a Red Ball making up. It's dangerous riding 'em, but it's our only chance. The Shacks on them carry guns and are hard-boiled. If you knew how to ride the rods it wouldn't be so bad. We'll have to make it on

turbed, Red keeping a lookout over the top of the car for the Shacks.

"Here comes one," he called, "now watch for his light, and when you see it grab the hand-guard, swing out and put your foot on the ladder, hug the car tight, and wait till he goes by. I'll swing out from the other side!"

Red stepped on to the next bumper and stood ready. I caught the glint of the brakeman's light on top, grabbed the hand-guard, swung to the side of the car, and hung there in a panic. The rushing air seemed to be dragging my hands loose. Then suddenly the light was shining full on me.

"Get off of there!" yelled a harsh voice, and I looked into the face of the Shack.

"I can't jump here!" I said, the train was hitting about forty miles an hour.

"Jump, or you'll get this." The Shack leveled a pistol at me.

I was wild with terror. In the darkness I could make nothing of the ground as we rushed along. The face above the light was cold and hard. "I-I can't!" I said. "I'll get off-”

"Jump, damn you!" The muzzle of the gun was against my head. Then I jumped into the blackness.

When I came to I was lying in a marsh, daylight was breaking and Red was kneeling beside me.

and cinders continually fly up and hit you in the face, but that is a small matter compared to other hardships of the Road.

We rode the rods for about forty miles, then crawled out and found an empty box-car, where we slept till the train rolled into Cairo. Red was still leery of the Bulls, and said we'd better not try to panhandle. So we went to a jobber's and I bought a supply of pins, court-plaster, and buttons. Then while Red worked his soap artist graft around the restaurants and saloons, I peddled among the houses, using the school gag. In most places I sold, even those who didn't buy treated me well, though in a few cases the door was slammed in my face. I liked this better than asking for food, and by evening I had several dollars in my pocket.

That night I rode my first "blind." The blind is the front platform of the front baggage car of a passenger train, which is right behind the coal-tender. The door leading out to it is locked and baggage piled against it on the inside. The thing is to lie low on the opposite side of the train from the station, then as she pulls out run and jump her. The train crew are all busy on the station side, and seldom pay attention to the other. When she is slowing down for a stop you must watch to see which side the station is on, and jump off just before you get there, then run ahead and find another hiding place to wait in until she pulls out again. It requires some hustling to do this and keep clear of the Bulls.

We held down the blind for three stops, then the fireman appeared over the end of the tender. "Hey,

you guys!" he called, "come up here and pass coal!"

Red grinned. "Take us to the end of your run?"

"Sure, right into Kay City!" We climbed up into the tender, and all night Red and I took turns with the fireman passing coal. The work was easy, and to me thrilling to be riding in the engine cab between times. About two o'clock in the morning the engineer and the fireman opened their dinner pails and we all had a big feed with hot coffee.

At Kansas City we crossed the State line.

"Well, here we are, Kid, this is Kansas. What part did you want to go to?" Red had never asked me why I wanted to get to Kansas. It is a law of the Road not to ask personal questions.

"I wanted to get work in the wheat-fields."

"Oh, that's your game, all right, there's an agency here hires men for that."

At the agency we found a gang ready to be shipped out. Labor was scarce, and I was big for my age, and the gang boss said he'd take

me.

"So long, Buddy." There was a wistful look in Red's face as he turned and walked away.

I looked at the gang boss, a big good-natured fellow, then looked at Red's retreating back.

"Hey, Red!" I yelled, "wait a minute!"

Red stopped, turned around, and smiled.

"I'm going with you!" I called. I just couldn't leave Red. The lure of the Open Road had me. I had become a hobo.

A

LITTLE over twenty-five years ago a group of boys ranging in years from thirteen to fifteen were graduated from one of the public schools of New York's lower East Side. They were the usual dark-eyed, dark-haired youngsters found in this part of that city, no different from the classes that preceded them or those that came after. Each youngster was a second-generation American in the sense that his father had come to find in America a more satisfactory answer to the grave problems of living. The backgrounds of these children were the countries of Central Europe-Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Russia. Go down to the East Side of New York to-day and you'll find, among the push-carts and the noisy shops and noisier smells that give personality to these streets, similar dark-eyed little boys doing the same things as did their forerunners. Give them a second look as you pass, for a generation from now one of two things will have happened. You may not then recognize them as foreigners because they have become so integral a part of American life; or, what is equally possible, you may very definitely know a few of them because of some distinguished performance.

Something there was in that group of twenty youngsters that made them decide not to lose sight of each other in the years that were to come. Solemnly they decided to meet together around a table once every year to keep intact the tie of early friendships. Certainly that is not unusual. The same pledges and promises are made every year in every school. As a rule, however, they are not kept; maturity does not seek reunions with the same enthusiasm with which youth plans them.

The first year these boys met in a little restaurant in the heart of the streets in which they had played. Over a twenty-five-cent dinner, they talked of the changes the year had brought and the things that the new year might bring. The second, third and fourth years, this ceremony was repeated, each time in the same little restaurant. Most of the boys were then going to high school; several were planning to work their way through college.

As the years went on, the meetingplace changed, keeping pace with the change of habitation and the fortune of these youths. A movement north marks the progress of the immigrant in New York. First it is the upper sections of the city, then Riverside Drive, Park Avenue, and

finally the fashionable suburbs. As a matter of fact, this is pretty much the route of progress of New Yorkers of native strain, Instead of the twenty-five-cent dinner on the lower East Side, the boys met in places that charged a dollar, a dollar and a half and more. They were getting ahead.

To-day the men who as youngsters planned their lives together over a twenty-five-cent meal, meet at the very best hotels. This statement is important only because of its significance. It indicates what what this group, typical of the teeming masses of New York's slums, has done. By hard work, by grit, by bucking family misfortune and poverty, they have come through as important and constructive members of society. A list of eighteen of them shows how they have grown. Nine are physicians, five of whom are specialists of no mean reputation One is a pediatrist, one a pathologist whose name is as well known at the Pasteur Institute in Paris as it is here, one a nose and throat man, one a gynecologist, one a syphilographer. The other four are general practitioners whose service to their patients is not a little warmed and strengthened by memories of days. on the lower East Side. Two of the remaining nine are lawyers, two dentists, one a civil engineer, one a professor at the City College of New York, one a philatelist known to all stamp collectors in the country, two are exceedingly prosperous business men. During the war, a goodly percentage of them enlisted. Several went over as officers.

different or extraordinary but because it is typical. Too readily do Americans of to-day accept the double-barreled myth that the time of opportunity for the lowly is gone and that the humble stranger to our shores contributes little that is worth while to American life.] The proof of democracy is in the rise of its humble. America's humble, to a very large degree, is made up of immigrants who come here from every corner of the earth seeking the opportunity the Old World denies them. America proves her democracy in the fact that her humble do not stay humble. They do not stay unlettered and uncultured. They get ahead just as did the immigrants of a hundred years ago, just as did the immigrants who came here on the Mayflower three centuries ago. The story of American opportunity for growth to-day is the same as it was in the beginning.

If the Czech or the German or the Pole or the Italian or Swede or Scotchman does not get the stride and the rhythm of the country when he comes here, then certainly his son gets it. If the first digs a ditch, the chances are that his son will become a builder or architect; if the father works in a factory, the son may own one; if the new immigrant regrets his illiteracy, the son, it is fair to assume, will be a professor in a college. Invariably, almost, the son of an immigrant rises several degrees above his father in the social and industrial scale of American life. The lowest class of yesterday becomes the better class of to-day, its place being in turn taken by new groups of struggling immigrants.

Progress is movement, and SO