the fragments of a bursting bomb, at Broadway. A vague sense of
proprietorship, the kiss of home, momentarily smoothed out the wrinkles
in his soul as the lights of the Great White Way beamed down a welcome
upon him. Then it was slowly borne in on him that, though with the
crowd, he was not of it. His mother, the great cosmopolitan city, had
repudiated him. For Broadway is a place for presents or futures; she has
no welcome for pasts. With her, charity begins at home--and stays there.

Garrison drifted hither and thither with every cross eddy of humanity,
and finally dropped into the steady pulsating, ever-moving tide on the
west curb going south--the ever restless tide that never seems to reach
the open sea. As he passed one well-known café after another his mind
carried him back over the waste stretch of "It might have been" to
the time when he was their central figure. On every block he met
acquaintances who had even toasted him--with his own wine; toasted
him as the kingpin. Now they either nodded absently or became suddenly
vitally interested in a show-window or the new moon.

All sorts and conditions of men comprised that list of former friends,
and not one now stepped out and wrung his hand; wrung it as they had
only the other day, when they thought he would retrieve his fortunes by
pulling off the Carter Handicap. They did not wring it now, for there
was nothing to wring out of it. Now he was not only hopelessly down
in the muck of poverty, but hopelessly dishonored. And gentlemanly
appearing blackguards, who had left all honesty in the cradle, now
wouldn't for the world be seen talking on Broadway to little Billy
Garrison, the horribly crooked jockey.

It wouldn't do at all. First, because their own position was so
precarious that a breath would send it tottering. Secondly, because