siastic, giving vent to these preachments. Something in
Carrie appealed to him. He wanted to stir her up.

"I know," she said, absently, feeling slightly guilty of neglect.

"If I were you," he said, "I'd change."

The effect of this was like roiling helpless waters. Carrie troubled
over it in her rocking-chair for days.

"I don't believe I'll stay in comedy so very much longer," she
eventually remarked to Lola.

"Oh, why not?" said the latter.

"I think," she said, "I can do better in a serious play."

"What put that idea in your head?"

"Oh, nothing," she answered; "I've always thought so."

Still, she did nothing--grieving. It was a long way to this better
thing--or seemed so--and comfort was about her; hence the inactivity and
longing.

Chapter XLVII. THE WAY OF THE BEATEN--A HARP IN THE WIND

In the city, at that time, there were a number of charities similar in
nature to that of the captain's, which Hurstwood now patronised in a
like unfortunate way. One was a convent mission-house of the Sisters of
Mercy in Fifteenth Street--a row of red brick family dwellings, before
the door of which hung a plain wooden contribution box, on which was
painted the statement that every noon a meal was given free to all those
who might apply and ask for aid. This simple announcement was modest in
the extreme, covering, as it did, a charity so broad. Institutions and
charities are so large and so numerous in New York that such things as
this are not often noticed by the more comfortably situated. But to one
whose mind is upon the matter, they grow exceedingly under inspection.
Unless one were looking up this matter in particular, he could have
stood at Sixth Avenue and Fifteenth Street for days around the noon hour
and never have noticed that out of the vast crowd that surged along
that busy thoroughfare there turned out, every few seconds, some
weather-beaten, heavy-footed specimen of humanity, gaunt in countenance
and dilapidated in the matter of clothes. The fact is none the less
true, however, and the colder the day the more apparent it became.
Space and a lack of culinary room in the mission-house, compelled an
arrangement which permitted of only twenty-five or thirty eating at one
time, so that a line had to be formed outside and an orderly entrance
effected. This caused a daily spectacle which, however, had become
so common by repetition during a number of years that now nothing was
thought of it. The men w