The Club disappointed me. I thought companionship would relieve, but it
only served to aggravate my loneliness. Everything talked about seemed
local and trivial, and everybody appeared to sail under a different flag
of interest. So after enduring this as long as possible I wandered out,
walking down town for no other reason than to be among people I didn't
know and who didn't know me--a hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you cure for
loneliness.
A conservative investor once told me there was no better or safer
property than a cheap lodging-house on the Bowery. Possibly my informant
imparted his discovery to others, for the number of these establishments
has increased tremendously during the last few years. But when many
Conservative Investors undertake to walk the same road, the result is
usually the elimination of some of them--only those, of course, who
are not really entitled to be termed conservative. This sorting of the
just from the unjust does not occur, however, until the Malthusian
Doctrine needs a business illustration. As I walked along the
east-side thoroughfare and noted the lodging-houses packed to their
utmost capacity, I concluded that the number of applicants for such
accommodation must have increased in a manner at once flattering to the
judgment of the Conservative Investor, and satisfactory to his highest
interest.
Who inhabit these houses? Well, men who have no better homes--drunken,
idle and shiftless men--strangers in this somewhat inhospitable
town--men looking for work and men looking for mischief--great, hulking,
ignorant brutes whose hope lies in their muscle, and well-formed fellows
with intelligent faces--all sorts and conditions of men--a great tide of
humanity that flows in at night and ebbs out in the morning, never and
yet ever the same. A steadily rising tide? O, yes, perhaps,--but look at
the embankments!
It was curiosity and not a desire to educate myself for the day when I
might become a Conservative Investor that led me to enter No. 99-1/2
Bowery.
Its sign offered attractions suited to almost any purse, the management
apparently catering to every taste in the scale of social refinement.
It read