ople coming and going through open doors, and a
general air of comradeship and busy living, it is hard to see. But there
is not a lonely vagabond in the world who does not know that they do. One
may see on a dark night many a wistful face of lonely man or lonely woman,
hurrying resolutely past, and looking away from, the illumined houses
which mean nothing to them except the keen reminder of what they are
without. Oh, the homeless people there are in this world! Did anybody ever
think to count up the thousands there are in every great city, who live in
lodgings and not in homes; from the luxurious lodger who lodges in the
costliest rooms of the costliest hotel, down to the most poverty-stricken
lodger who lodges in a corner of the poorest tenement-house? Homeless all
of them; their common vagabondage is only a matter of degrees of decency.
All honor to the bravery of those who are homeless because they must be,
and who make the best of it. But only scorn and pity for those who are
homeless because they choose to be, and are foolish enough to like it.

Mercy had never before felt the sensation of being a homeless wanderer.
She was utterly unprepared for it. All through the breaking up of their
home and the preparations for their journey, she had been buoyed up by
excitement and anticipation. Much as she had grieved to part from some of
the friends of her early life, and to leave the old home in which she was
born, there was still a certain sense of elation in the prospect of new
scenes and new people. She had felt, without realizing it, a most
unreasonable confidence that it was to be at once a change from one home
to another home. In her native town, she had had a position of importance.
Their house was the best house in the town; judged by the simple standards
of a Cape Cod village, they were well-to-do. Everybody knew, and everybody
spoke with respect and consideration, of "Old Mis' Carr," or, as she was
perhaps more often called, "Widder Carr." Mercy had not thought--in her
utter inexperience of change, it could not have occurred to her--what a
very different thing it was to be simply unknown and poor people in a
strange place. The sense of all this smote upon her suddenly and keenly,
as they jolted along in the noisy old carriage on this dark, rainy night.
Stephen White's indifferent though kindly manner first brought to her the
thought, or rather the feeling, of this. Each new glimmer of the
home-lights deepened her