been your wish,--and then perhaps some day we will
come back together."

After this, for the first time for many nights, Theodore Carden fell
into a dreamless sleep.

A BUNK-HOUSE AND SOME BUNK-HOUSE MEN

BY ALEXANDER IRVINE

ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. C. YOHN

About fifteen years ago I was appointed spiritual adviser to the
Diocese of the Bowery and Chatham Square. This strange whirlpool of
humanity presents a problem of more than ordinary proportions to the
policeman or the missionary. The Bowery is a mile of American life in
which the nations of the earth meet for excitement and change. There
is a business aspect of it which is permanent, but the many-colored
throng surging up and down its side-walks all day and all night is
ephemeral. It is the place for the homeless, for the out of kilter,
for the rudderless wrecks who drift. Its fifty or more lodging-houses
are filled with men whose only home is the six-by-ten room in which
they sleep.

A block from Chatham Square I found a resort which I at once made a
base of operations for my campaign. It was a bunk-house, a big
five-story rear tenement at No. 9 Mulberry Street. The entrance to it
was a slit in the front block--a long, deep, narrow alley, then, as
now, indescribably filthy. Over the iron gate at the entrance was the
name of the house and the price of some of the beds. "Bismarck" was
the name; the lodgers used to call it "Hotel de Bismarck." The lower
floors were filled with ten- and twelve-cent bed-cots; the upper
floors were bunk dormitories. A bunk is a strip of canvas. For seven
cents a night the lodger gained admission to the dormitory. Once
there, he might stretch himself on the bunk, or he might take
advantage of the floor. Of the three hundred guests, more than half
were accommodated on canvas or on the floor.

The covering on the ten-cent bed was changed once a month; if a man
wanted toilet accommodations, he paid for them elsewhere. The Bismarck
never had a bath, nor a wash-basin.

A ten- or twelve-cent guest had a wardrobe; it was seldom used, but it
was there. At the head of each cot stood this tall, narrow receptacle
for the clothing and valuables of the guests, but in the old days wise
guests slept in their clothes. I have known of unsuspecting wayfarers
who deposited their belongings in the wardrobe, locked it, and hid the
key under the pillow, and next morning had to wrap themselves in
newspapers or in a borrowed sheet until they cou