There isn't a blooming thing you could tell me about boys!" he concluded with animation.
"And you think that all boys are alike ?" "More or less under the skin.

Of course some are washed and some are dirty--I was dirty--but they're all boys, every last one of them, and all boys are just kids.

With the first money I made out West, I started a lodging-house for them--the dirty ones--down in the Bowery," he added.
"They can get a wash and a supper and a night's lodging in a bed with real sheets any night in the year." She was suddenly interested.

"Do you care for boys just because you were a boy yourself ?" she asked.
"Because I was such a God-forsaken little chap, I guess.

You were never down in a cellar, I suppose, the kind of cellar people live in?
Well, I was born in one, and my father had killed himself the week before because he was ill with consumption, and couldn't get work.