he third day I saw some of my equal outcasts
inspecting a bill on a telegraph pole in Kearny Street, and on reading
it I found it a religious advertisement of some services to be held in a
street running out of Kearny, I believe in Upper California Street. At
the bottom of the bill was a notice that men out of work and starving
who attended the meeting would be given a meal. Having been starving
only some twenty-four hours I sneered and walked on. My agnosticism was
bitter in those days, bitter and polemic.

But I got no work. The streets were full of idle men. They stood in
melancholy groups at corners, sheltering from the rain. I knew no one
but a few of my equals. I could get no ship; the city was full of
sailors. I starved another twenty-four hours, and I went to the service.
I said I went for the warmth of the room, for I was ill-clad and wet. I
found the place half full of out-o'-works, and sat down by the door. The
preacher was a man of a type especially disagreeable to me; he looked
like a business man who had cultivated an aspect of goodness and
benevolence and piety on business principles. Without being able to say
he was a hypocrite, he struck me as being one. He was not bad-looking,
and about thirty-five; he had a band of adoring girls and women about
him. I was desolate and disliked him and went away.

But I returned.

I went up to him and told him brutally that I disbelieved in him and in
everything he believed in, explaining that I wanted nothing on false
pretences. My attitude surprised him, but he was kind (still with that
insufferable air of being a really first-class good man), and he bade me
have something to eat. I took it and went, feeling that I had no place
on the earth.

But a little later I met an old friend from British Columbia. He was by
way of being a religious man, and he had a hankering to convert me.
Failing personally, he cast about for some other means, and selected
this very preacher as his instrument. Having asked me to eat with him at
a ten-cent hash house, he inveigled me to an evening service, and for
the warmth I went with him. I became curious about these religious
types, and attended a series of services. I was interested half in a
morbid way, half psychologically. Scott, my friend, found me hard, but
my interest made him hope. He took me, not at all unwilling, to hear a
well-known revivalist who combined religion with anecdotes. He told
stories well, and filled a church ev