ld reach a junk-store.
The key was safe, but the wardrobe and contents had disappeared.

On the second floor was the sitting-room. There was a stove for winter
months, and against the wall on four sides of the room were built
benches. There was but one chair in the room; that was the clerk's.
The walls were whitewashed; the windows were covered most of the time
with cobwebs and dirt, and the floor was littered with rubbish.

The clerk was a quiet man by the name of Allen. He had a bouncer named
McBriarty--his nickname was "Gar." The bouncer had an understudy who
was called Frank--"Big Frank." The house was owned at that time by a
banker named Barsotti.

_The Gathering of the Men who Were_

Every afternoon, winter and summer, about five o'clock, the men began
to gather about the little iron gate, and as Big Frank swung it back,
they filed through the slit in single file and ascended the stairs.

Ten-cent men registered. Bunk-men threw down a nickel and two cents
and became guests at large. Guests who registered were handed a chunk
of wood too large to enter an ordinary pocket; attached to the wood
was the key of the wardrobe. A small discount was made on a week's
lodging paid in advance, but few took advantage of it, for nobody ever
expected to stay a week; some had been there for years, but they paid
each night as they entered, for they expected each night to be their
last. Old customers looked into each other's faces at evening with a
glance which meant: "Hello! back again?"

I saw a woman there once. She came to look for a son, and sat by the
door, scanning the faces as they passed her. Over a hundred men
lingered around the sitting-room that night. At least a score of them
repassed her, just to get a glimpse of her face, in which, though it
was that of a stranger, many of them retraced their steps back over
life's jagged roadway. They asked the clerk questions that needed no
answer, just to get near for a moment. They tiptoed across the floor;
they spoke in whispers; and they indignantly hustled several
half-drunken lodgers out of the room. Her anxious face set them all
thinking; it created an atmosphere in which those men of life's
undertow grew tender and kind.

I tabulated, by the aid of the clerk, the ages, nationalities, and
occupations of one hundred of them. Fifty were German, twenty Irish,
sixteen native Americans; the rest were from the ends of the earth.
Each of them gave an occupation; there were