record of a kindergarten experience, in comparison with what would
be the picture showing as plainly a heart of some man of the city. Did
you ever read the diary, unearthed after his death, and printed in part
but recently, of Ellsworth, the young Zouave colonel, who was slain in
Alexandria, and avenged on the moment, at the very beginning of the
great civil war? That is a diary worth the reading. There is told the
story of not alone vain hopes and ungratified ambitions, but of an
empty stomach and dizzy head to supplement the mental agony and make
its ruthlessness complete. There were, too, the high courage which was
sorely tested--and an empty stomach is a dreadful shackle--and the
bulldog pertinacity which ever does things. That was a diary of real
life, with little room for dreams, and much blood upon the pen.

It befell Grant Harlson to learn how helpless in the great city is the
man as yet unlearned in all its heartlessness and devious ways and lack
of regard for strangers, and the story of Ellsworth was very nearly his.

It was well enough at first. He had some money, and had occupation at
a pittance, intended only by the law firm with whom he was a student to
serve for his car or cab-hire when on service outside the office. His
privilege of studying with the firm was counted remuneration for his
services, and he was, so far as this went, but in the position of other
young men of his age and value under such circumstances, but, unlike
others, he had relied upon the law of chance to aid him.

One hundred dollars does not last long when one is healthy and has a
mighty appetite, and, that gone, two dollars and fifty cents a week,
and hard work for it, is very little to live on, and Harlson found it
so. Not for all the comforts of the world would he have written home
for aid in the town. It seemed there was nothing for him to do. It
had become mid-winter, and the winter was a cold one. Gaunt men
followed the coal wagons or visited the places where charity is
bunglingly dispensed by the sort of people who drift into smug
officials at such agencies as naturally as some birds fly to
worm-besprinkled furrows for their gleanings.

Harlson saw much of this, and knew his fate was not the worst among so
many, and it aided him in his philosophy, but he had a mighty appetite.
He was a great creature, of much bone and brawn, and being hungry was
something he could not endure. He thought--how far back it seemed--o