human
I did start in to live with Jim Wardwell's folks. You see, business was mighty good for a spell, an' I got to feelin' way up toney where nothin' short of a reg'lar room would do me. I paid a dollar a week jest for sleepin' there. Ten big, round plunks for ten weeks, an' then I tumbled to myself! You see, it was too rich for my blood when there come a long spell of bad weather, an' I wasn't takin' in more'n twenty-five cents a day, so I snooped 'round to see if I couldn't find somethin' that would be cheaper. Then I struck this shed, an' I says to myself, says I, 'That's jest my size'; but I knew it wouldn't do to try to bite it out of the carpenter's ear 'less I had a pretty good story to put up. I waited four whole days till it turned 'round so cold that the hair on your head would freeze, an' long towards the middle of the afternoon it began to snow. Then I said to myself that the time had come when I'd got to make the trade. I crawled into the carpenter's shop an' give him a pretty straight story. Told him how bad business was--Well, he could see for himself nobody would want boots shined in that weather. He said if I promised him I wouldn't freeze to death, 'cause he didn't want any dead bootblacks on his hands, I could come in for a spell. An' don't you think I wasn't fixed! All the shavings I wanted for a bed right there on the floor, an' if the boss of the Astor House had got down on his knees beggin' me to come to his hotel to stop, I'd said 'no,' 'cause I couldn't be bothered with the airs they put on down that way. How long can I stay here? I ain't troublin' my head 'bout that. I don't let the man what owns the place see me any oftener than I can help, an' so long's I keep out of sight there ain't much chance of my bein' fired.