There is something of Dickens in this memoir. John Jack Day was born in England and reared for a few years in a famous orphanage, there. When he was ten, he was put on a boat and sent across the rough northern Atlantic to Canada. He worked for the next 8 years for a man he hated. A large, strong boy, when he was 18 he left the farm and struck out on his own. Eventually he made his way to central Illinois and the booming railroad industry. Day writes candidly of his wives, his lovers, his failures, his temper, and the losses along the way.