calling those
nights of hopeless misery with the policeman's periodic 'Get up there!
move on!' reinforced by a prod of his club or the toe of his boot. I slept
there, or tried to when crowded out of the tenements in the Bend by their
utter nastiness. Cold and wet weather had set in, and a linen duster was
all that covered my back. There was a woolen blanket in my trunk which I
had from home--the one, my mother had told me, in which I was wrapped when
I was born; but the trunk was in the 'hotel' as security for money I owed
for board, and I asked for it in vain. I was now too shabby to get work,
even if there had been any to get. I had letters still to friends of my
family in New York who might have helped me, but hunger and want had not
conquered my pride. I would come to them, if at all, as their equal, and,
lest I fall into temptation, I destroyed the letters. So, having burned my
bridges behind me, I was finally and utterly alone in the city, with the
winter approaching and every shivering night in the streets reminding me
that a time was rapidly coming when such a life as I led could no longer
be endured.

Not in a thousand years would I be likely to forget the night when it
came. It had rained all day, a cold October storm, and night found me,
with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through
and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat
on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark
tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the
gulf now between the 'castle,' with its refined ways, between her, in her
dainty girlhood, and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was
slowly stealing away my senses with my courage. There was warmth and cheer
where she was. Here an overpowering sense of desolation came upon me. I
hitched a little nearer to the edge. What if----? Would they miss me much
or long at home if no word came from me? Perhaps they might never hear.
What was the use of keeping it up any longer, with, God help us,
everything against, and nothing to back, a lonely lad?...

It was not only breakfast we lacked. The day before we had had only a
crust together. Two days without food is not good preparation for a day's
canvassing. We did the best we could. Bob stood by and wagged his tail
persuasively while I did the talking; but luck was dead against us, and
'Hard Times' stuck to us for all we tried. Evening came an