"It is always hard times on the Bowery," my diminutive informant told
me. He was a new comer to our Colony. He, in company with another young
man, had made his appearance an hour or two before, but I had not been
able to talk with him, except to assure him that he and his friend
might remain with us one night, at least. "Yes, sir," he continued,
"without money a man is a dead one; even in this strange haunt of
stranger men money is a daily need. Of course, some men who know the
hidden ways can get along on as little as twenty cents a day, or less,
but for myself I could not exist on less than thirty-five cents."
The figures he mentioned seemed modest enough to me. "Couldn't you earn
that much?" I asked him.
"I am so small no one would hire me," he replied. "I could get errands
to do now and then. Of course, while my mother lived she kept a home
for me, but after she died I did not know what to do. I only sat in the
house day after day and looked out of the window. I could not make any
plans for myself. You see when I was a baby I fell and injured my back.
I didn't grow much more after that accident. The doctors called it a
curvature."
He laughed easily as he asked me, "You know the poem of James Whitcomb
Riley,
'I'm th'ust a little cripple boy
An' never going to grow,
An' git a great big man at all,
'Cause auntie told me so.'
"I rather think I'm that boy. One time I chanced to find that poem and
read it to my mother. She took the book from me in the gentle way she
had, and then putting her arms around me, told me to be a good boy and
everything would come out all right. But they never did come all right.
Maybe I was not good enough; but this can't interest you. You hear
enough hard luck stories without mine."
"If you wish to tell me," I said, "I shall be quite glad to listen."
"Well, it's only this," he continued. "Left to myself, I wasn't smart
enough to make a living. I can't get my room rent and my lunch money
all at the same time. If I have my lunches I have no room, and if I
have a room I have nothing to eat."
He grew very serious. He could laugh at his misshapen back, make a jest
at his deformity, but hunger--even at the thought of hunger--the smile
left his face, the color fled from his lips.
"Are you faint?" I asked him quickly.
"No, I am a coward," he said, "just a plain coward. You see, I am
beaten and I know it."
"You will be all right in a few days," I said, "and be able to
criticise the food as cheerfully as any other member of my Family." I
laughed gayly enough, but he did not laugh with me. "Have you and this
boy been friends a long time? Where did you meet him?" I inquired.
"In the park, some weeks ago. He has no home either. He was sleeping
out and so was I. He gave me part of a newspaper to put under me, as
the ground was damp. So I tried to talk to him.... He is good looking,
isn't he?"