TOD SLOAN 



and some pie and told me there were rats about the 

 house — ^that was for Tony's benefit. 



She kept on putting questions, asking me this, that 

 and the other about my schooHng and what I was 

 going to do for a Hving, and I had to make the best 

 answers I could. 



Then she began to ask whether I was going to stay 

 the night and I repeated that I had " come on a visit." 

 I soon began to feel that we were outstaying 

 a welcome and after two days my aunt was glad to 

 turn me and my dog out : we had outstayed our 

 welcome. She was a good churchwoman and never 

 could hold with my not being the same as all the 

 other folk she knew. Her husband worked on the 

 Pennsylvania Railway and I got no sympathy from 

 him either. Tony and I camped out for a night or 

 two, then I went back home and my adopted mother 

 (Mrs Blauser — Aunt Lib) asked me, without letting 

 me in at the front door, whether I had come for my 

 trunk. Never having had either a trunk or enough 

 clothes to fill even a small bag I could see that she was 

 " talking sarcastic " and I could see also that she 

 meant it. What was I to do ? 



There was no question but that the situation spelt 

 w-o-R-K, or at all events earning enough to board me, 

 and buy myself a chew and tobacco for my pipe — for I 

 had begun early at the habit which led to sixteen or 

 more coronas a day. Don't forget I was only thirteen 

 years old. 



I went to work at the gas and oil wells, and Mr 

 James Neil took me in. Neil was a foreman master 

 driller and I soon picked up enough knowledge 

 of the engine- work. Two serious explosions in which 

 I nearly lost my life made me get a bit '\fache " with 

 the oil-well graft, and when the No. 4 well drill 



lO 



