XXXII.

AND YET HE CLINGS TO LIFE.

As I sit here by my window I am reminded that this is a queer world and
queer be the mortals that pass through it. There is that wreck of a
man over yonder squeezing a bit of weird melody out of an old accordion
and expecting the tortured public to throw a penny into his hat now and
then to pay him for his trouble. Do you suppose that man knows what
happiness means, as God designed it. He was, without doubt, a sad and
grimy little baby once, brought up on gin slightly adulterated with his
mother's milk. He was pounded daily before he was two years old,
starved and cuffed and kicked all the way up to manhood, and now his
neck is so completely under the heel of hydra-headed disaster,
wickedness and want, that all he can find to do in this big and busy
world is to sit on the sidewalk and lacerate the public ear with those
dreadful discords. And yet, if death were to step up to that beggar's
side and offer him release, instant and sure, in the form of a falling
brick or a horse running amuck on the crowded sidewalk, he would cling
to the miserable shred he calls life as eagerly as though he were the
crown prince himself, with the heritage of his kingdom yet unwon.




XXXIII.

OH! TO RID THE WORLD OF SHAMS.