aste! I felt a strong
inclination to stop a few of them and say:

"Friends, cheer up. It isn't half as bad as you think it is. Cheer up!"

After a time the severity of the human flood began to abate, and here
and there at the bottom of that gulch of a street, which had begun to
fill with soft, bluish-gray shadows, the evening lights a appeared. The
air had grown cooler; in the distance around a corner I heard a street
organ break suddenly and joyously into the lively strains of "The
Wearin' o' the Green."

I stepped out into the street with quite a new feeling of adventure. And
as if to testify that I was now a visible person a sharp-eyed newsboy
discovered me--the first human being in Kilburn who had actually seen
me--and came up with a paper in his hand.

"Herald, boss?"

I was interested in the shrewd, world-wise, humorous look in the
urchin's eyes.

"No," I began, with the full intent of bantering him into some sort of
acquaintance; but he evidently measured my purchasing capacity quite
accurately, for he turned like a flash to another customer. "Herald,
boss?"

"You'll have to step lively, David Grayson," I said to myself, "if you
get aboard in this city."

A slouchy negro with a cigarette in his fingers glanced at me in passing
and then, hesitating, turned quickly toward me.

"Got a match, boss?"

I gave him a match.

"Thank you, boss," and he passed on down the street.

"I seem to be 'boss' around here," I said.

This contact, slight as it was, gave me a feeling of warmth, removed a
little the sensation of aloofness I had felt, and I strolled slowly down
the street, looking in at the gay windows, now ablaze with lights, and
watching the really wonderful procession of vehicles of all shapes and
sizes that rattled by on the pavement. Even at that hour of the day I
think there were more of them in one minute than I see in a whole month
at my farm.

It's a great thing to wear shabby clothes and an old hat. Some of the
best things I have ever known, like these experiences of the streets,
have resulted from coming up to life from underneath; of being taken for
less than I am rather than for more than I am.

I did not always believe in this doctrine. For many years--the years
before I was rightly born into this alluring world--I tried quite the
opposite course. I was constantly attempting to come down to life from
above. Instead of being content to carry through life a sufficiently
wonderful being n