oney Island one July evening. He chose Coney Island
deliberately, because of all the places under the sun, Coney Island is
pre-eminently the home and haunt of the North American dime. At Coney, a
dime will buy almost anything except what a half-dime will buy. On Surf
Avenue, then, which is Coney's Greatest Common Divisor, he strolled back
and forth, looking for one of an aspect suitable for this experiment.
Mountain gorges of painted canvas and sheet-tin towered above him;
palace pinnacles of lath and plaster speared the sky; the moist salt
air, blowing in from the adjacent sea, was enriched with dust and with
smells of hot sausages and fried crabs, and was shattered by the bray of
bagpipes, the exact and mechanical melodies of steam organs, and the
insistent, compelling, never-dying blat of the spieler, the barker and
the ballyhoo. Also there were perhaps a hundred thousand other smells
and noises, did one care to take the time and trouble to classify them.
And here the very man he sought to find, found him.

There came to him, seeking alms, one who was a thing of shreds and
patches and broken shoes. His rags seemed to adhere to him by the power
of cohesive friction rather than by any visible attachments; it might
have been years since he had a hat that had a brim. It was in the faint
and hungered whine of the professional that he asked for the money to
buy one cup of coffee; yet as he spoke, his breath had the rich
alcoholic fragrance of a hot plum pudding with brandy sauce.

The beggar made his plea and, with a dirty palm outstretched, waited in
patient suppliance. He sustained the surprise of his whole panhandling
life. He was handed a new, uncreased one-thousand-dollar bill. He was
told that he must undertake to change the bill and spend small
fractional parts of it. Succeeding here, he should have five per cent of
it for his own. As Judson Green impressed these details upon the ragged
vagrant's dazed understanding, he edged closer and closer to his man,
ready to cut off any sudden attempt at flight.

The precaution was entirely unnecessary. Perhaps it was because this
particular panhandler had the honour of his profession--in moments of
confidence he might have told you, with some pride, that he was no
thief. Or possibly the possession of such unheard-of wealth crippled his
powers of imagination. There are people who are made financially
embarrassed by having no money at all, but more who are made so by
having t