gruffly: "I got no money." He thought it was an advertising dodger,
and he said: "I can't buy nothin'."

"It isn't anything for sale," answered the woman. "It's a message."

"Religion?" said Peter. "I just got kicked out of a church."

"No, not a church," said the woman. "It's something different; put
it in your pocket." She was an elderly woman with gray hair, and she
followed along, smiling pleasantly at this frail, poor-looking
stranger, but nagging at him. "Read it some time when you've nothing
else to do." And so Peter, just to get rid of her, took the leaflet
and thrust it into his pocket, and went on, and in a minute or two
had forgotten all about it.

Peter was thinking--or rather Peter's stomach was thinking for him;
for when you have had nothing to eat all day, and nothing on the day
before but a cup of coffee and one sandwich, your thought-centers
are transferred from the top to the middle of you. Peter was
thinking that this was a hell of a life. Who could have foreseen
that just because he had stolen one miserable fried doughnut, he
would lose his easy job and his chance of rising in the world?
Peter's whole being was concentrated on the effort to rise in the
world; to get success, which means money, which means ease and
pleasure--the magic names which lure all human creatures.

But who could have foreseen that Mrs. Smithers would have kept count
of those fried doughnuts every time anybody passed thru her pantry?
And it was only that one ridiculous circumstance which had brought
Peter to his present misery. But for that he might have had his