The ranks of the Bed Line moved closer together; for it was cold. They
were alluvial deposit of the stream of life lodged in the delta of Fifth
Avenue and Broadway. The Bed Liners stamped their freezing feet, looked
at the empty benches in Madison Square whence Jack Frost had evicted
them, and muttered to one another in a confusion of tongues. The
Flatiron Building, with its impious, cloud-piercing architecture looming
mistily above them on the opposite delta, might well have stood for the
tower of Babel, whence these polyglot idlers had been called by the
winged walking delegate of the Lord.

Standing on a pine box a head higher than his flock of goats, the
Preacher exhorted whatever transient and shifting audience the north
wind doled out to him. It was a slave market. Fifteen cents bought you a
man. You deeded him to Morpheus; and the recording angel gave you
credit.

The preacher was incredibly earnest and unwearied. He had looked over
the list of things one may do for one's fellow man, and had assumed for
himself the task of putting to bed all who might apply at his soap box
on the nights of Wednesday and Sunday. That left but five nights for
other philanthropists to handle; and had they done their part as well,
this wicked city might have become a vast Arcadian dormitory where all
might snooze and snore the happy hours away, letting problem plays and
the rent man and business go to the deuce.

The hour of eight was but a little while past; sightseers in a small,
dark mass of pay ore were gathered in the shadow of General Worth's
monument. Now and then, shyly, ostentatiously, carelessly, or with
conscientious exactness one would step forward and bestow upon the