t length he was obliged to
confess that he could devise no solution, and that he did not feel half
as good as he had a few hours before.

At all events he would be as happy as he could. After leaving the
company's office, where he received a hearty "Merry Christmas" and a
fat yellow envelope, he went to the neat little brick house on Cherry
Street where he had rooms, and learned that Mrs. O'Hare, his landlady,
had gone to her daughter's house on Varick Street to set up a Christmas
tree and help to start things for the children. Dan was sorry. He had
rather looked forward to meeting this cheerful person with her
spectacles and kindly old face, who mothered him so assiduously when he
was ashore.

Why the devil had he not thought of finding out about those
grandchildren and of buying them something for Christmas? But he had
not, and now he did not know whether they were girls or boys or both,
nor how many of them there were. So he had no way of knowing what to
buy, or how much. Somehow he had here a feeling that he had been on
the verge of an interesting discovery. But only on the verge.

He walked slowly out of the house and turned into South Street. In the
life of this quaint thoroughfare he had cast his lot, and here he spent
his leisure hours; not that he had ever found the place or the men he
met there especially congenial. But they were the men he knew, the men
he worked with or worked against; and any young fellow who is lonely in
a big city and placed as Dan was is just as liable, until he has found
himself and located his rut in life, to mingle with persons as strange,
with natures as alien, and to frequent places which in later years fill
him with repulsive memories.

At all events Dan did, and he was not worrying about it a bit, either,
as he sauntered under the Brooklyn Bridge span at Dover Street and
turned into South, where Christmas Eve is so joyous, in its way. The
way on this particular evening was in no place more clearly interpreted
than Red Murphy's resort, where the guild of Battery rowboatmen, who
meet steamships in their Whitehall boats and carry their hawsers to
longshoremen waiting to make them fast to the pier bitts, congregate
and have their social being.

Here, on this day, the wealthy towboat-owners and captains are wont to
distribute their largess to the boatmen as a mark of appreciation for
favors rendered,--a suggestion that future favors are expected,--and
here, also, punch