d stove, his word of greeting,
and his final word of benediction to the men he had selected to share
in his bounty as they slunk out of the bunk-house to begin the day.

Later, he had a large-type New Testament out of which he read a verse
or two every morning at the meal. Very soon the three hundred lodgers
began to look upon him with a kind of awe. This was not because he had
undergone a radical change, for he had always been quiet, gentle and
civil; but because he had found his voice, and that voice was bringing
to them something they could not get elsewhere--sympathy, cheer and
courage.

In the tenement region, particularly in the little back alleys around
Mulberry Street, he mended pots, kettles, pans and umbrellas--not
always for money, but as often for the privilege of reading to these
people messages of comfort out of his large-type New Testament.

Going down Mulberry Street one morning in the depth of winter, I
happened to glance up one of those narrow alleys in "the Bend," and I
noticed my friend standing at a window, his face close to a broken
pane of glass and his large New Testament held in front of him a few
inches from his face. His tinker's budget was by his feet. The door
was closed. In a few minutes he closed the book, put it into his kit,
and as he moved away from the window, I saw a large bundle of rags
pushed into the hole.

"What have you been doing?" I inquired.

He laughed. "There, now, God bliss her," he said. "I put a rib in an
umbrella for her, but she said the house was too dirty to read the
Bible in, so she let me read it through the broken window."

All that winter he tinkered and taught. All winter the little ragged
audiences gathered around him in the morning; and often at eventime
when he retreated into a quiet corner to be silent and rest, he found
himself the centre of an inquiring group of his fellow-lodgers.

Instead of uniting himself to the mission, as such men usually do
after their conversion, I advised him to join one of the prominent
churches of the city, in the downtown district. I thought it would be
good for the church. But we both discovered our mistake later. He was
utterly out of keeping with his surroundings. The church he joined was
an institution for the favoured few--and Dowling was a tinker.

His diary of that period is before me as I write, and I am astonished
at the great humility of this simple-minded man.

He had been asked by the minister of his church