actually held her and Millie in _their_ debt by reading their palms,
sometimes twice a day ... I think it was my Uncle Joe who at last ousted
them....

* * * * *

When I came back from Aunt Rachel's I found a voluble, fat, dirty, old,
yellow-haired tramp established in the ground floor of the same house.
He had, in the first place, come to our back door to beg a hand-out.
And, sitting on the doorstep and eating, and drinking coffee, he had
persuaded my grandmother that if she would give him a place to locate on
credit he knew a way to clear a whole lot of money. His project for
making money was the selling of home-made hominy to the restaurants up
in town.

* * * * *

I found him squatted on the bare floor, with no furniture in the room.
He had a couple of dingy wash-boilers which he had picked up from the
big garbage-dump near the race-track.

Day in, day out, I spent my time with this tramp, listening to his
stories of the pleasures and adventures of tramp-life.

I see him still, wiping his nose on his ragged coat-sleeve as he
vociferates....

When one day he disappeared, leaving boilers, hominy and all, behind, I
missed his yarns as much as my grandmother missed her unpaid rent.