to have anything to do with me. I've had all I
want. If work don't come in a week I'll get out of this the easiest
way.'

"It didn't come. My money was gone: I'd gone hungry two days. I'd been
on half rations before that, till my strength was all gone: I'd pawned
my clothes till I wasn't decent. Then I hadn't a cent even for a place
on the floor in a lodgin'-house, an' I sat in the City Hall Park long as
they would let me. Then, when I was tired of bein' rapped over the head,
I got up an' walked down Beekman street to the river--slow, for I was
too far gone to move fast. But as I got nearer something seemed to pull
me on: I began to run. 'It's the end of all trouble,' I said; an' I
went across like a shot an' down the docks. It was bright moonlight, an'
I had sense to jump for a dark place where the light was cut off; an'
that's all I remember. I must have hit my head ag'inst a boat, for when
they took me out it was for dead. Two of my old pals hauled me out, an'
worked there on the dock to bring me to, till the ambulance come an'
took me to Bellevue.

"I wouldn't have lived, but I didn't know enough not to, bein' in a
fever a month. Then I come out of it dazed an' stupid, an' it wasn't
till I'd been there six weeks that I got my senses fairly an' knew I was
alive after all.

"'I'll do it better next time,' I said, bein' bound to get out of it
still; but that night a man in the bed next me began to talk an' ask
about it. I told him the whole. When I got through he says, 'I don't
know but one man in New York that'll know just what to do, an' that's
McAuley of Water street. You go there soon's you can stir an' tell him.'

"I laughed. 'I'm done tellin',' I said.

"'Try him,' he says; an' he was that urgent that I promised. I'd ha'
given a hand if I hadn't, though.

"I went out, tremblin' an' sick, an' without a spot to lay my head; an'
right there I stood by the river an' thought it would come easier this
time. But I'd never go back on my word, an' so I started down, crawlin'
along, an' didn't get there till meetin' had begun. I didn't know what
sort of a place it was.

"It was new then, in an old rookery of a house, but the room clean an'
decent, an' just a little sign out, 'HELPING HAND FOR MEN.' I sat an'
listened an' wondered till it was over, an' then tried to go, but first
I knew I tumbled in a dead faint an' was bein' taken up stairs. They
made me a bed next their own room. 'You'd better not,' I said: 'I'm a