down a little further, his cocked hat depressed further over his face,
and a potato skin stopped his mouth. How true it is that no person can
be in such disreputable circumstances that he has not the remembrance
of better days to soothe him, and like the Tomato Can, ever find true
comfort in the top-shelf on which he long ago may have roosted.

* * * * *

But as a new friend, the Street must always take the first place with
a sick man. How new everything in the Street becomes to the man who
views it from a sick bed! You would think he had never seen it before.
Nor has he. No man in health lies and sees the Street wake up in the
morning. Nor does the man in health, walking about the Street, see how
prettily it goes to sleep. The lengthening shadows make it drowsy for
a little while, but as evening comes it makes a great stir. It sends
hundreds of hustling people along its walks hurrying home. It lights
up hundreds of windows and shop fronts and looks as much as to say,
"I think I will make a night of it. I've sent all the children to bed
and now I'll have a time of it." But the steady old Street on which
I live gives up its dissipated idea early, turns off light after light,
and soon the lonely sidewalks are without a passenger. The Street does
one thing for the sick man you wouldn't expect; it arouses a spirit
of rebellion that is astonishing. Resignation is a beautiful virtue,
but it chiefly exists on side streets and out of town. The man who is
sick on a main street and professes to be resigned is a hypocrite. My
friend, the Street, presents to me Thompson. What do I say? "Ah,
Thompson, take the blessing of a sick man?" Not a bit of it. I say,
what right has Thompson to be walking along attending to business and
possibly taking surreptitious cooling drinks, while I am doomed to
staring out of the window and drinking beef tea? But Thompson don't