s rose out of the night: the men, lean as laths,
collars turned up and caps drawn down; girls, some with red lights and
some with no lights in their eyes, and most of them with too red lips of
too few curves, and all of them with chalk-colored powder laid on over
the golden pollen of youth.

Within Harry's place, Christmas found little enough berth except that
above the great soaped-over mirror at the far end of the room a
holly wreath dangled from the tarnished gilt frame and against the
clouded-over glass a forefinger had etched a careless Merry Christmas.

At tables set so close that waiters side-stepped between them, the
habitues of Harry's place dined--wined, too, but mostly out of uncovered
steins or two-inch stemless glasses. And here and there at smaller
tables a solitary figure with a seer's light in his eyes sipped his
greenish milk!

An electric piano, its shallow tones undigested by the crowded room,
played in response to whomsoever slipped a coin into its maw. Kicked-up
sawdust lay in the air like flakes.

From her table near the door Miss Marjorie Clark pushed from her a
litter of half-tasted dishes and sent her dark glance out over the room.
A few pairs of too sinuous dancers circled a small clearing around the
electric piano. Waiters with fans of foam-drifting steins clutched
between fingers jostled them in passing. At a small table adjoining, a
girl slept in her arms. Two more entered, elbow in elbow, and directly
a youth in a wide-striped wool sweater muffled high to his teeth, and
features that in spite of himself would twitch and twitch again.

"Hi, Blink," he said in passing.

"Hi."

Reader, your heart lifted up and glowing with Yuletide and good-will
toward men, turn not in warranted nausea from the reek of Harry's
place. Mere plants can love the light and turn to it, but have not the
beautiful mercy to share their loveliness with foul places. The human
heart is a finer work. It can, if it will, turn its white light upon
darkness, so that out of it even a single seed may take heart and grow.
A fastidious olfactory nerve has no right to dominion over the quality
of mercy. The heart should keep its thousand doors all open, each
heart-string a latch-string, and each latch-string out.

Marjorie Clark met her companion's eyes above the rim of his stein.
"Looks more like hell on a busy day down here than like Christmas Eve,
don't it?"

He was warmed, and the tight skin had softened as dried fr