About fifteen years ago I was appointed spiritual adviser to the
Diocese of the Bowery and Chatham Square. This strange whirlpool of
humanity presents a problem of more than ordinary proportions to the
policeman or the missionary. The Bowery is a mile of American life in
which the nations of the earth meet for excitement and change. There
is a business aspect of it which is permanent, but the many-colored
throng surging up and down its side-walks all day and all night is
ephemeral. It is the place for the homeless, for the out of kilter,
for the rudderless wrecks who drift. Its fifty or more lodging-houses
are filled with men whose only home is the six-by-ten room in which
they sleep.
A block from Chatham Square I found a resort which I at once made a
base of operations for my campaign. It was a bunk-house, a big
five-story rear tenement at No. 9 Mulberry Street. The entrance to it
was a slit in the front block--a long, deep, narrow alley, then, as
now, indescribably filthy. Over the iron gate at the entrance was the
name of the house and the price of some of the beds. "Bismarck" was
the name; the lodgers used to call it "Hotel de Bismarck." The lower
floors were filled with ten- and twelve-cent bed-cots; the upper
floors were bunk dormitories. A bunk is a strip of canvas. For seven
cents a night the lodger gained admission to the dormitory. Once
there, he might stretch himself on the bunk, or he might take
advantage of the floor. Of the three hundred guests, more than half
were accommodated on canvas or on the floor.
The covering on the ten-cent bed was changed once a month; if a man
wanted toilet accommodations, he paid for them elsewhere. The Bismarck
never had a bath, nor a wash-basin.
A ten- or twelve-cent guest had a wardrobe; it was seldom used, but it
was there. At the head of each cot stood this tall, narrow receptacle
for the clothing and valuables of the guests, but in the old days wise
guests slept in their clothes. I have known of unsuspecting wayfarers
who deposited their belongings in the wardrobe, locked it, and hid the
key under the pillow, and next morning had to wrap themselves in
newspapers or in a borrowed sheet until they could reach a junk-store.
The key was safe, but the wardrobe and contents had disappeared.
On the second floor was the sitting-room. There was a stove for winter
months, and against the wall on four sides of the room were built
benches. There was but one chair in the room; that was the clerk's.
The walls were whitewashed; the windows were covered most of the time
with cobwebs and dirt, and the floor was littered with rubbish.
The clerk was a quiet man by the name of Allen. He had a bouncer named
McBriarty--his nickname was "Gar." The bouncer had an understudy who
was called Frank--"Big Frank." The house was owned at that time by a
banker named Barsotti.
_The Gathering of the Men who Were_
Every afternoon, winter and summer, about five o'clock, the men began
to gather about the little iron gate, and as Big Frank swung it back,
they filed through the slit in single file and ascended the stairs.
Ten-cent men registered. Bunk-men threw down a nickel and two cents
and became guests at large. Guests who registered were handed a chunk
of wood too large to enter an ordinary pocket; attached to the wood
was the key of the wardrobe. A small discount was made on a week's
lodging paid in advance, but few took advantage of it, for nobody ever
expected to stay a week; some had been there for years, but they paid
each night as they entered, for they expected each night to be their
last. Old customers looked into each other's faces at evening with a
glance which meant: "Hello! back again?"
I saw a woman there once. She came to look for a son, and sat by the
door, scanning the faces as they passed her. Over a hundred men
lingered around the sitting-room that night. At least a score of them
repassed her, just to get a glimpse of her face, in which, though it
was that of a stranger, many of them retraced their steps back over
life's jagged roadway. They asked the clerk questions that needed no
answer, just to get near for a moment. They tiptoed across the floor;
they spoke in whispers; and they indignantly hustled several
half-drunken lodgers out of the room. Her anxious face set them all
thinking; it created an atmosphere in which those men of life's
undertow grew tender and kind.
I tabulated, by the aid of the clerk, the ages, nationalities, and
occupations of one hundred of them. Fifty were German, twenty Irish,
sixteen native Americans; the rest were from the ends of the earth.
Each of them gave an occupation; there were barbers, tinkers,
teamsters, tailors, waiters, laborers, longshoremen, painters,
paper-hangers, and scissors-grinders. One man put "banker" opposite
his name. This led to an extra inquiry.
"Of course," he said, "I am for the time being down and out; but
banking is my business."
Their trades were of the past--their vitality had oozed out, their
grip on life was relaxed; if it ever tightened again, the first result
of it would be another grade of surroundings.
In order to find out how they got a living, I followed some of these
men through the maelstrom of city life. I found some distributing
circulars. Others sold pencils, matches, laces. They lounged around
saloons, sticking their dirty fists into the free-lunch dishes. They
played lame, sick, halt, blind; they panhandled on the streets and
alleys--especially the alleys, where they fared best. A dozen or more
attended the ferries, waiting for a chance to carry baggage. They were
unfit for hard work--they would not die.
Twelve cents a day kept most of them. When they didn't manage seven
cents for a bunk, they "carried the banner"--walked the streets or
stood in a "dead-house" saloon, where there are no seats and where a
man must stand. Many of them, when worsted completely, would "hit the
bread-line," after midnight, not so much for the bread as for a place
to stand where they would be immune from the policeman's club.
Despite some plain lessons to the contrary, I believed most of them
to be victims of laziness; but in a single year twelve of them dropped
on the floor dead: to these I gave the benefit of the doubt.
"_The Hardest Work Is No Work at All_"
One Sunday night I told a hundred men in the Bismarck that the reason
they had no work was, that they were loafers and didn't want work.
This was in accordance with my theory--the prevailing theory--that
poverty is the child of sin, that lack of work is the fruit of
shiftlessness. I offered to change clothes with any man in the house,
and to go out in the world and show him how to get a job. The
challenge was accepted instantly--by an Irishman.
I wisely changed the article of agreement regarding clothes; I got up
my own outfit! Next morning, at half-past five, I met Tim, the man who
had accepted the challenge, and we proceeded to the labor-market.
From the "want" columns of the morning papers we selected a few bits
of labor bait. We ran them down, failed to find anything, and turned
to the shops and factories on the West Side. The answers were
monotonous. "Full up," they said, or a card at the door or gate
announced that the firm had a "full complement." I felt like a
mendicant. I found myself begging for work in a subservient tone and
manner. In one place, I remember, I said, "For God's sake." The
superintendent laughed and waved us away.
"The harrudest work, for sure, is no worruk at all, at all!" said my
companion, by way of sympathy.
It was mid-afternoon; I was growing desperate with my sense of
failure, and at this point I launched a scheme which had been growing
in my mind for hours.
"Keep close to me now, Tim," I said, and I led him into a drug-store
at the corner of Grand Street and the Bowery.
"Sir," I said to the clerk, "you are not accustomed to giving credit,
I know; but perhaps you might suspend your rule for once and trust a
stranger for a very small sum?"
"What is't?" asked the clerk, with something of a sneer.
"I am hungry and thirsty. I have looked for work since five o'clock,
and have utterly failed to find it. Now I have a scheme; I know it
will work. Oxalic acid eats away rust. If I had five cents' worth, I
could make a dollar an hour--I know I could."
The clerk listened and looked. He was good enough to say that I didn't
talk like a bum, though I looked like one. He inquired anxiously if I
was "off my hook." At last he said: "By ----! I've been on the Bowery
a long time, and haven't been sold once. If you're a skin-game man,
I'll throw up my job!" I got the acid.
Then I played the same game in a tailor-shop for rags and in a
hardware store for some polishing-paste. The stock cost fifteen
cents--on credit.
There used to be a big dry-goods store on the east side of Chatham
Square. It had two immense brass signs.
"Nawthin' doin'," said the man, when I applied for the job of cleaning
them. Nevertheless, I cleaned and polished a square foot of one big
sign. The boss looked at it, and then at Tim and me.
"I'll clean both for a dime," I said.
"Well, go ahead," he said. The Cleaning Company went from store to
store until we had enough money for our bills, a meal, and a surplus
in the treasury.
As we sat down to dinner at "Beefsteak John's," I handed Tim the
surplus, and rather impatiently probed for his acknowledgment of my
victory. I had made good, and wanted all that was due me.
"What do you think of it, Tim?" I asked, with an air of satisfaction
and confidence.
"Shure, ye're a janyus, yer Honor; no doubt av that at all, at all;
but----"
"Go on!" I said.
"I was jist switherin', yer Honor, what a wontherful thing ut is that
a man kin always hev worruk whin he invints ut!"
"Well, that's worth knowing," I said disappointedly. "Did you learn
anything else?"
"Well, it takes to do that thrick what most av us hevn't got; ut takes
brains, sor--ut takes brains!"
"Why don't you have brains, then?"
He looked dumbly at me, and hung his head.
"I dunno--I dunno," he muttered.
The men at the Bismarck needed no urging to attend the meeting the
following Sunday. Grogan had told his story; they were anxious to hear
mine. The room was crowded to suffocation. They stood on the benches;
they sat on the window-sills--everywhere; from all directions, the
eyes of that dull, heavy human mass were penetrating me.
I was frank and explicit in my analysis of the experiment. I had no
idea that Grogan would speak, but he did, and his speech was pointed.
"Whin ye talk religion, mister," he said, "ye're O.K.; but whin ye say
we're lazy hobos, all av us, ye're spakin' round the rim av yer hat!"
Grogan made the crowd laugh when he told them how I had been turned
away from shops and factories.
"Some av us poor divils hev done that same," he said, "fur weeks--until,
begobs, we wisht we wur dead or hung or anythin'!"
I was about to close the meeting, when an old man known as "Judge"
shuffled out to the front and asked permission to speak. He was a man
of education whom I had not hitherto been able to engage in
conversation.
The Judge administered a scathing rebuke, closing with a touch of
humor, which was lost on the crowd. I stood there in the midst of a
handful of friends, who mingled their pity with indignation. I took
what belonged to me, and thanked the old man. The experiment exploded
some of my theories and sent me to the school of facts.
_Graf von "Habenichts"_
Nothing in the life of the bunk-house was more noticeable than the way
men of intelligence grouped themselves together. Besides the Judge,
there was an ex-Parliamentarian, an ex-lawyer, an ex-soldier of
Victoria, and a German Graf. I named them the "Ex-Club." Every morning
they separated as though forever. Every night they returned, and
looked at one another in surprise.
At election-time both political parties had access to the register,
and every lodger was the recipient of two letters. Between elections a
letter was always a matter of sensational interest; it lay on the
clerk's table, waiting to be claimed, and every lodger inspected it as
he passed. Scores of men who never expected a letter would pick it up,
handle it in a wistful and affectionate manner, and regretfully lay it
down again. I have often wished I could analyze the thoughts of these
men as they handled tenderly these rare visitors conducted by Uncle
Sam into the bunk-house of Blind Alley.
It was a big letter with red seals and an aristocratic monogram that
first drew attention to a new-comer who had signed himself "Hans
Schwanen." "One-eyed Dutchy" had whispered to some of his friends that
the recipient of the letter was a real German Graf.
He was about sixty years of age, short, rotund, corpulent. His head
was bullet-shaped and set well down on his shoulders. His clothes were
baggy and threadbare, his linen soiled and shabby. He had blue eyes,
harsh red hair, and a florid complexion. When he arrived, he brought
three valises. Everybody wondered what he could have in them.
The bouncer was consumed with a desire to examine the contents, and,
as bouncer and general floor-manager of the house, expected that they
would naturally be placed under his care. When, however, it was
announced that the new-comer had engaged One-eyed Dutchy as his valet,
the bouncer swore and said "he might go to ----."
There was something peculiar and mysterious in a ten-cent guest of the
Bismarck hiring a valet. "Habenichts" kept aloof from the crowd. He
had no friends, and would permit no one to establish any intercourse
with him.
Dutchy informed an intimate friend that the Graf received a check from
Germany every three months. While it lasted, it was the valet's duty
to order, pay for, and keep a record of all food and refreshment. When
the bouncer told me of these things, I tried very hard to persuade the
Graf to dine at my house; but he declined without even the formality
of thanks. After a few months the revenue of the mysterious stranger
dried up. One-eyed Dutchy was discharged.
A snow-storm found the old Graf with an attack of rheumatism, and
helpless. Then he was forced to relinquish his ten-cent cot and move
upstairs to a seven-cent bunk. When he was able to get out again, he
came back, dragging up the rickety old stairs a scissors-grinder.
Several of the guests offered a hand, but he spurned them all, and
stuck to his job until he got it up.
Another snow-storm brought back his rheumatism; he got permission to
sit indoors. The old wheel lay idle in the corner; he was hungry, and
his pipe had been empty for a day and a night, but still he sat bolt
upright, in pain, alone, with starvation staring him in the face. The
third day of his involuntary fast he got a letter. It contained a
one-dollar bill. The sender was watching at a safe distance, and he
recorded that the Graf's puzzled look almost developed into a smile.
He gathered himself together and hobbled out to a near-by German
saloon. Next day came the first sign of surrender. He accepted a
commission to take a census of the house. This at least helped to thaw
him out, but it didn't last long.
Because his rheumatism prevented him from pushing his wheel through
the streets, I secured him a corner in a locksmith's basement. He had
not been there many weeks when he disappeared. The locksmith told a
story which seemed scarcely credible. He said the old Graf had sold
his wheel and given the proceeds to an Irishwoman to help defray the
funeral expenses of her child.
Some months later, Allen, the clerk, got a postal-card from One-eyed
Dutchy. He was on the Island, and the Graf and he were working
together on the ash gang. I helped to get him off the Island--at his
own urgent solicitation. I myself considered him much better off where
he was.
When the Graf returned to the bunk-house, every one who had ever seen
him noted a wonderful change. He no longer lived in a shell. He had
become human, and took an interest in what was going on. One night,
when a few of the Ex-Club were exchanging reminiscences, he was
prevailed upon to tell his story. He asked us to keep it a secret for
ten years. The time is up, and I am the only one of that group alive.
_The Tale of the Old German Noble_
"In 1849 it was; my brother and I students were in Heidelberg. Then
broke out the Revolution. Two years less of age was I, so to him was
due my father's title and most of the estate. 'What is revolution?'
five of us students asked. 'We know not; we will study,' we all said,
and we did. For King and fatherland our study make us jealous, but my
brother was not so.
"'I am revolutionist!' he says, and we are mad to make him different.
"'The King is one,' he said, 'and the people are many, and they are
oppressed.'
"I hate my brother, and curse him, till in our room he weeps for
sorrow. I curse him until he leaves.
"By and by in the barricades he finds himself fighting against the
King. In the fight the rebels are defeated and my brother escapes.
Many are condemned and shot. Not knowing my heart, my mother writes to
me that my brother is at home.
"I lie in my bed, thinking--thinking. Many students have been shot for
treason. Love of King and fatherland, and desire to be Graf, are two
thoughts in my heart.
"I inform. My brother is arrested, and in fortress is he put to be
shot.
"Four of us students of patriotism go to see. My heart sinks to see my
brother, so white is he and fearless. His eyes are bright like fire,
and he stands so cool and straight.
"'I have nothing but love,' he says; 'I love the cause of truth and
justice. To kill me is not to kill the truth; where you spill my blood
will revolution grow, as flowers grow by water. I forgive.'
"Then he sees me. 'Hans!' he says, 'Hans!' He holds out his arms. 'I
want to kiss my brother,' he says. The general he says, 'All right.'
"But I love the King. 'No! I have no brother! I will not a traitor
kiss!'
"My Gott! how my brother looks! He looks already dead--so full of
sorrow is he.
"A sharp crack of guns! They chill my heart, and down dead falls my
brother.
"I go away, outside glad, but in my heart I feel burn the fires of
hell. Father and mother in one year die for sorrow. Then I am Graf.
"I desire to be of society, but society will not--it is cold. Guests
do not come to my table. Servants do not stay. They tell that they
hear my mother weep for sorrow in the night. I laugh at them, but in
my heart I know them true. Peasants in the village hide from me as I
come to them.
"But my mind is worse. Every night I hear the crack of the rifles--the
sound of the volley that was my brother's death. Soldiers I get, men
of the devil-dare kind, to stay with me. They do not come back; they
tell that they hear tramp, tramp, tramp of soldiers' feet.
"One night, with the soldiers, I take much wine, for I say, 'I shall
be drunk and not hear the guns at night.'
"We drink in our noble hall. Heavy doors are chained, windows barred,
draperies close arranged, and the great lamp burns dim. We drink, we
sing, we curse God und das Gesindel. 'We ourselves,' we say, 'are
gods.'
"Then creeps close the hour for the guns. My tongue is fast and cannot
move; my brow is wet, and frozen is my blood.
"Boom! go the guns; then thunder shakes the castle, lightning flashes
through draperies, and I fall as dead.
[Illustration: THE BUNK-HOUSE]
"Was I in a dream? I know not. I did not believe in God; I did not
believe in heaven or in hell; yet do I see my past life go past me in
pictures--pictures of light in frames of fire: Two boys, first,--Max,
my brother, and I,--playing as children; then my mother, weeping for
great sorrow; then the black walls of the great fortress--my brother
with arms outstretched. Again my blood is frozen, again creeps my
skin, and I hear the volley and see him fall to death. I fear. I
scream loud that I love the King, but in my ear comes a voice like
iron--'Liar!' A little girl then, with hair so golden, comes and wipes
the stain of blood from my brow. I see her plain.
"Then I awake. I am alone; the light is out; blood is on my face. I am
paralyzed with fear, so I cannot stand. When I can walk, I leave, for
I think maybe that only in Germany do I hear the guns. For twenty
years I live in Spain. Still do I hear the guns.
"I go to France, but yet every night at the same hour freezes my blood
and I hear the death volley.
"I come to America, which I have hated, yet never a night is missed.
It is at the same hour. What I hate comes to me. Whatever I fear is
mine. To run away from something is for me to meet it. My estate is
gone; money I have not. I sink like a man in a quicksand, down, down,
down. I come here. Lower I cannot."
"One day in the Bend, where das Gesindel live, I see the little
girl--she of the golden hair, who wiped my stain away.
"But she is dead. I know for sure the face. What it means I know not.
Again I fall as dead.
"I have one thing in the world left--only one; it is my scissors-grinder.
I sell it and give all the money to bury her. It is the first--it is the
only good I ever did. Then, an outcast, I go out into the world where no
pity is. I sit me down in a dark alley; strange is my heart, and new.
"It is time for the guns--yet is my blood warm! I wait. The volley
comes not!
"The hour is past!
"'My Gott! My Gott!' I say. 'Can this be true?' I wait one, two, three
minutes; it comes not. I scream for joy--I scream loud! I feel an iron
hand on me. I am put in prison. Yet is the prison filled with
light--yet am I in heaven. The guns are silent."
One day a big letter with several patches of red sealing-wax and an
aristocratic monogram arrived at the bunk-house.
Nearly two hundred men handled it and stood around until the Graf
arrived. Every one felt a personal interest in the contents. It was
"One-eyed Dutchy" who handed it to the owner, and stood there watching
out of his single eye the face of his former master. The old man
smiled as he folded the letter and put it into his pocket, saying as
he did so: "By next ship I leave for Hamburg to take life up where I
laid it down."
_A Statesman Under a Cloud_
I was sitting on the bench near the door in the bunk-house one day at
twilight, when I noticed a profile silhouetted against the window. I
had seen only one profile like that in my life, and that was when I
was a boy.
I moved closer. The man sat like a statue. His face was very pale, and
he was gazing vacantly at the walls in the rear of the building.
Finally I went over and sat down beside him.
"Good evening," he said quietly, in answer to my salutation.
I looked into his face--a face I knew when a boy, a face familiar to
the law-makers of Victoria for a quarter century.
I called him by name. At the sound of his own name his paleness turned
to an ashy yellow.
"In Heaven's name," I said, "what are you doing here?"
He looked at me with an expression of excruciating pain on his face,
and said:
"I have traveled some thousands of miles in order to be alone; if you
have any kindness, any pity, leave me."
"Pardon me," I said, "for intruding."
That night the Ex-Club invited him to take part in their deliberations.
He refused, and his manner showed that he considered the invitation
an insult.
I had known this man as a brilliant orator, a religious leader, the
champion of a sect. In a city across the sea I had sat as a
bare-legged boy on an upturned barrel, part of an immense crowd,
listening to the flow of his oratory. Next day he left the bunk-house.
Some weeks afterward I found him on a curbstone, preaching to whoever
of the pedestrians would listen.
At the close of his address I introduced myself again. He took me to
his new lodging, and I put the questions that filled my mind. For
answer, he gave me the House of Commons Blue Book, which explained the
charge hanging over him. Almost daily, for weeks, I heard him on his
knees proclaim his innocence of the unmentionable crime with which he
was charged. After some weeks of daily association, he said to me: "I
believe you are sent of God to guide me, and I am prepared to take
your advice."
My advice was ready. He turned pale as I told him to pack his trunk
and take the next ship for England.
"Face the storm like a man!" I urged, and he said:
"It will kill me, but I will do it."
He did it, and it swept him to prison, to shame, and to oblivion.
_A St. Francis of the Bunk-house_
One Sunday afternoon I was going through the dormitories, calling the
lodgers to prayer. On one of the ten-cent cots an old white-haired man
was reading a life of Buffalo Bill. His face was marred by a scar over
one of the eyes. He spoke gently and with a pronounced Irish accent.
[Illustration: "ONE NIGHT THE GRAF WAS PREVAILED UPON TO TELL HIS STORY"]
"I am an Episcopalian," he said, when I invited him below to the
meeting.
"We have all denominations," I assured him. Everybody in the
bunk-house had a connection, more or less remote, with some sect.
"Say," said the bouncer, concerning the old man, "dat ol' duffer's got
de angel goods on him O.K."
[Illustration: THE SITTING-ROOM OF THE BISMARCK]
His name was Edward Dowling. He was a gentleman. He had soldiered
under Sir Colin Campbell and Sir Henry Havelock in India. Later he
owned a ranch in the West. Then an accident deprived him of the use of
an eye, and he spent all he had in trying to preserve his sight.
Homeless and penniless on the streets of New York, he had learned to
do tinkering and the mending of umbrellas.
In his poverty he drifted to the bunk-house.
The following Sunday, at our meeting, he had an awakening which
reminded me of the account of Paul's conversion on the way to
Damascus. It revolutionized his mental processes, and he began to give
outward expression to his new-found inner joy.
He would buy some stale bread overnight, and early in the morning he
would make coffee on the bunk-house stove in a quart tomato-can. Each
man, before he left the place, had a bite of stale bread and at least
a mouthful of warm coffee. Then they would uncover their heads while
the old man asked God to bless them for the day.
He tinkered for a living, but his vocation became the conversion of
men. From these small beginnings in quiet evangelism, he branched out
into work of the same kind among the tenements. He mended pots,
kettles, and pans, and charged for the job a chapter in the Bible. I
came on him suddenly one morning in an alley. Snow was on the ground,
and he was reading a chapter with his face close to a broken pane. It
appeared he had done some soldering for an Irishwoman, and asked the
privilege of reading to her.
"Begorra," she said, "the house isn't fit to read the Holy Book in,
but if yez w'u'dn't mind reading through the window, I'll take the
rags out."
So she took the bundle out of the broken pane, and Dowling bent over
and read his chapter.
When the Rev. John Hopkins Dennison took charge of the old Church of
Sea and Land, he established a sort of latter-day monastery in the old
square tower, and there Brother Dowling had a cell, where he lived
and worked among the poor for many years.
In an escapade with two other soldiers in the Sepoy rebellion, Dowling
had looted the palace of a raja. In the act of burying several canes
filled with diamonds, one of the three was shot dead. Dowling and the
other escaped. One day on the Bowery, forty years afterward, a man
laid his hand on Dowling's shoulder and asked him what he did with the
loot. It was the other man.
"What did _you_ do with it?" Dowling asked. Each had lived in the
belief that the other had got away with it.
The tinker-preacher was very much stirred up over this. He wrote
at once to the governor-general of India, told the whole story,
and offered to come out and locate the stolen booty. Money was
appropriated to pay his passage, but the old man was going on another
journey. He wrote a full description of the place and transaction,
and then lay down in the tower of the old church and died.
_"Doc," our Volunteer Organist_
"Say, Bub," said Gar, the bouncer, to me one day, "what ungodly hour
of the mornin' d'ye git up?"
"At the godly hour of necessity," I replied.
"Wal, I hev a pal I want ter interjooce to ye at six."
I met the bouncer and his "pal" at the corner of Broome Street and the
Bowery next morning at the appointed hour.
"Dat's Doc!" said Gar, as he clapped his hand on his friend's head.
His friend bowed low and in faultless English said: "I am more than
pleased to meet you."
"I can give ye a pointer on Doc," the big fellow continued. "If ye tuk
a peaner t' th' top av a mountain an' let her go down the side sorter
ez she pleases, 'e cud pick up the remains an' put thim together so's
ye w'u'dn't know they'd been apart. Yes, sir; that's no song an'
dance, an' 'e c'u'd play any chune iver invented on it."
[Illustration: "I NOTICED A PROFILE SILHOUETTED AGAINST THE WINDOW"]
"Doc" laughed and made some explanations. They had a wheezy old organ
in Halloran's dive, and Doc kept it in repair and played occasionally
for them. Doc had a Rip Van Winkle look. His hair hung down his back,
and his clothes were threadbare and green with age. His shoes were
tied to his feet with wire, and stockings he had none. He was a
New-Englander, and had studied medicine until his sheep-skin was
almost in his hand. Then Doc slipped a cog and went down, down, down,
until he landed at Halloran's dive. For twelve years he had been
selling penny song-sheets on the streets and in saloons. He was
usually in rags, but a score of the wildest inhabitants of that awful
dive told me that Doc was their "good angel." He could play the songs
of their childhood, he was kind and gentle, and men couldn't be vulgar
in his presence.
I saw in Doc an unusual man, and was able to persuade him to go home
with me. In a week he was a new man, clothed and in his right mind. He
became librarian of a big church library, and our volunteer organist
at all the Sunday meetings.
After two years of uninterrupted service as librarian, during which
time Doc had been of great service in the bunk-house, I lost him. Five
years later, crossing Brooklyn Bridge on a car, I passed Doc, who was
walking in the same direction. At the end of the bridge, I planted
myself in front of him. "Doc," I said, "you will never get away from
me again!" I took him to New Haven, where he has been janitor of a
hall in Yale University ever since.
_Gar, Bouncer of the Bismarck_
I have mentioned Gar, or Garfield, bouncer of the Bismarck. A strong,
primitive man, he is worth a chapter in himself. When I met him
first, I was scrubbing. Before I came, the Bismarck floor, like the
Bismarck linen, was cleaned once a month. Having made the house my
headquarters, I took some pride in it. I got permission to scrub
that floor mid-month, and, dressed in a suitable outfit, I proceeded
with the job. I hadn't gone far when a tall, gaunt form lurched into
the room.
"Hello," he grunted.
"Hello," I said, as I paused for a moment.
"What's up?" he asked.
"You haven't seen me before, have you?" I asked.
"Don't know ye from a hole in the ground!"
"Well, I'm the missionary, and as there's a vital connection between
soap and salvation, I'm making a beginning on the floor. When I finish
this, I'll try my hand on you."
He laughed a hoarse, guttural laugh, and said:
"Don't git bug-house, boss; ye'd wind up jest whar ye've begun!"
[Illustration: ST. FRANCIS OF THE BUNK-HOUSE]
He had several names; his real name was Brady. In the bunk-house
they called him "Gar." He was bull-necked, bullet-headed, tall,
round-shouldered, stooped. The story of a hard life was in his
face. He had been in the army, but they couldn't drill him. They
couldn't even get rid of his stoop. He must have looked like a
gorilla with a gun. In the Bismarck, he became the terror of the
lesser breeds--the king by right of conquest.
Gar was a challenge to me, for I saw in him something wild, untamed,
and, perhaps, untamable. I resolved to dispute with my own methods his
mastery of the place. Such was his power over the other men that,
could I only conquer him, the rest would be easy. I concentrated on
Gar.
It was virgin soil. He was ignorant of the vocabulary of religion.
This was the more amazing because he had spent fifteen or twenty years
in prisons. His special difficulty, I found, was intemperance. My
first task was to cure him of that.
One night, as he approached his bunk, he found me stretched out on the
next one.
"Well, I'll be----," he said.
"What's the matter, Gar?"
"Dat's what I ask youse. What's wrong with your machinery? Have ye
been rejooced to the ranks, or has Gawd bounced ye?"