" The young fellow who sits
near the door, abstractedly making figures in the wet track of the
"schooners," buries something there with a sudden restless turn, and
calls for another beer. Out in the street a band strikes up. A host
with banners advances, chanting an unfamiliar hymn. In the ranks
marches a cripple on crutches. Newsboys follow, gaping. Under the
illuminated clock of the Cooper Institute the procession halts, and
the leader, turning his face to the sky, offers a prayer. The passing
crowds stop to listen. A few bare their heads. The devoted group, the
flapping banners, and the changing torch-light on upturned faces, make
a strange, weird picture. Then the drum-beat, and the band files into
its barracks across the street. A few of the listeners follow, among
them the lad from the concert hall, who slinks shamefacedly in when
he thinks no one is looking.

Down at the foot of the Bowery is the "pan-handlers' beat," where the
saloons elbow one another at every step, crowding out all other
business than that of keeping lodgers to support them. Within call of
it, across the square, stands a church which, in the memory of men yet
living, was built to shelter the fashionable Baptist audiences of a
day when Madison Square was out in the fields, and Harlem had a
foreign sound. The fashionable audiences are gone long since. To-day
the church, fallen into premature decay, but still handsome in its
strong and noble lines, stands as a missionary outpost in the land of
the enemy, its builders would have said, doing a greater work than
they planned. To-night is the Christmas festival of its
English-speaking Sunday-school, and the pews are filled. The banners
of United Italy, of modern Hellas, of France and Germany and England,
hang side by side with the Chinese dragon and the starry flag--signs
of the cosmopolitan character of the congregation. Greek and Roman
Catholics, Jews and joss-worshippers, go there; few Protestants, and
no Baptists. It is easy to pick out the children in their seats by
nationality, and as easy to read the story of poverty and suffering
that stands written in more than one mother's haggard face, now
beaming with pleasure at the little ones' glee. A gayly decorated
Christmas tree has taken the place of the pulpit. At its foot is
stacked a mountain of bundles, Santa Claus's gifts to the school. A
self-conscious young man with soap-locks has just been allowed to
retire, amid tumultuous applause, after