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There was always a lot of horseplay around the shop when no boss was looking, and at times they might look in vain and not discover where the horseplay was; we had a hiding place. In the back side of one of the greasy pits the planking was incomplete, and through that empty blackness we could pass, with just a bit of squeezing, into a cozy little cavern big enough for four or five young fellows. The hideout had been formed as stealthily as if we who used it had been prisoners bent on escape. Well, whenever boredom came, escape was what we wanted.

In Ellis, playing cards was frowned upon by the Methodists, and that was the religious group to which I belonged. Association with bad women, the use of whiskey, cigarettes or cards were as evil brands; if you wore any one of these brands, the respectable mothers of the town would see that you were kept far from all decent daughters. A lot of years have passed and I can take the chance involved by my confessing: in that hideout we played cards, we smoked cigarettes and on a few occasions we had a little beer. All these iniquities were practiced in the earth below the shop floor, in the light of a candle stuck in a bottle's neck. Oh, how tough we felt ourselves to be!