John Sanders, Laborer by Francis Hopkinson Smith

[The outlines of this story were given me by my friend Augustus Thomas, whose plays are but an index to the tenderness of his own nature.]

He came from up the railroad near the State line. Sanders was the name on the pay-roll, -- John Sanders, laborer. There was nothing remarkable about him. He was like a hundred others up and down the track. If you paid him off on Saturday night you would have forgotten him the next week, unless, perhaps, he had spoken to you. He looked fifty years of age, and yet he might have been but thirty. He was stout and strong, his hair and beard cropped short. He wore a rough blue jumper, corduroy trousers, and a red flannel shirt, which showed at his throat and wrists. He wore, too, a leather strap buckled about his waist.