"No, sir; I ain't got no relatives."

"Perhaps, then, she is your sweetheart," I said.

Again he looked up in my face and said very earnestly, "Did you ever
know a boot-black without any name to have an angel for a sweetheart?"

His eyes were full of tears, and I made no answer, though I might have
told him I had found a boot-black who had a big, warm heart even if he
had no sweetheart. Very abruptly he said:

"You came over on the boat; what kind of a land is it over across the
river?"

"It is very pleasant in the country," I replied.

"Is it a land of pure delight, where saints immortal reign?"

Having just come from New Jersey where the infamous race track, and the
more infamous rum-traffic legalized by law, would sink the whole State
in the Atlantic Ocean, if it were not that it had a life preserver in
Ocean Grove, I was hardly prepared to vouch for it being that kind of a
land.

"Why do you ask that?" I said.

"Because I hear Jessie sing about it so much, and when I asked her
about it, she said it's a land where there's green fields, and flowers
that don't wither, and rivers of delight, and where the sun always