morning I rose and dressed, swallowed some
coffee and set out. I took a surface car downtown.

I had not been out at this hour in years. And as in my present mood,
troubled and expectant, I watched the streets in the raw half-light,
they looked as utterly changed to me as though they were streets of a
different world. The department store windows looked unreal. Their soft
rich lights had been put out, and in this cold hard light of dawn all
their blandishing ladies of wax appeared like so many buxom ghosts. Men
were washing the windows. Women and girls were hurrying by, and as some
of them stopped for a moment to peer in at these phantoms of fashion,
their own faces looked equally waxen to me. A long, luxurious motor
passed with a man and a woman in evening clothes half asleep in each
other's arms. An old man with a huge pack of rags turned slowly and
stared after them. The day's work was beginning. Peddlers trundled
push-carts along, newspaper vendors opened their stands, milk wagons and
trucks from the markets came by, some on the gallop. Our car had filled
with people now. Men and boys clung to the steps behind and women and
girls were packed inside, most of them hanging to the straps. How badly
and foolishly dressed were these girls. There must be thousands of them
out. Two kept tittering inanely. All the rest were silent.

By the time that I reached the docksheds the day was breaking over their
roofs. It was freezing cold, and the chill was worse in the dock that I
entered. I buttoned my ulster tighter. The big place was dark and empty.
The dockers, I learned from the watchman, had quit work at three
o'clock, for a few tons of fruit was all the freight that remained to be
loaded. The ship was to sail at nine o'clock.

The stokers had not yet gone aboard. I found about a hundred of them
huddled along the steel wall of the shed. Some of them had old leather
grips or canvas bags, but many had no luggage at all. A few wore seedy
overcoats, but the greater part had none, they stood with their hands in
their ragged pockets, shivering and stamping. Most of them were
undersized, some tough, some rather sickly. A dull-eyed, wretched,
sodden lot. I got the liquor on their breaths. A fat old Irish stoker
came drifting half-drunk up the pier with a serene and waggish smile.

"Hello," said Joe at my elbow.

He looked more fagged than the day before. I noticed that his lips were
blue and that his teeth were chattering.

"J