and breakfast
cost next to nothing. Yes, I can be a push-cart peddler in the
day; I can sleep out of doors at night; I can do with coffee and
oranges for lunch and breakfast; but in the evening I will
assert my dignity and do justice to my taste: I will dine at the
Hermitage and permit you to call me a fool. And why not, since
my purse, like my stomach, is now my own? Why not go to the
Hermitage since my push-cart income permits of it? But the first
night I went there my shabbiness attracted the discomforting
attention of the fashionable diners, and made even the waiters
offensive. Indeed, one of them came to ask if I were looking for
somebody. 'No,' I replied with suppressed indignation; 'I'm
looking for a place where I can sit down and eat, without being
eaten by the eyes of the vulgar curious.' And I pass into an
arbor, which from that night becomes virtually my own, followed
by a waiter who from that night, too, became my friend. For
every evening I go there, I find my table unoccupied and my
waiter ready to receive and serve me. But don't think he does
this for the sake of my black eyes or my philosophy. That
disdainful glance of his on the first evening I could never
forget, billah. And I found that it could be baited and mellowed
only by a liberal tip. And this I make in advance every week for
both my comfort and his. Yes, I am a fool, I grant you, but I'm
not out of my element there.

"After dinner I take a stroll in the Flower Gardens, and
crossing the rickety wooden bridge over the river, I enter the
hemlock grove. Here, in a sequestered spot near the river bank,
I lay me on the grass and sleep for the night. I always bring my
towels with me; for in the morning I take a dip, and at night I
use them for a pillow. When the weather requires it, I bring my
blankets too. And hanging one of them over me, tied to the trees
by the cords sown to its corners, I wrap myself in the other,
and praise Allah.

"These and the towels, after taking my bath, I leave at the
Hermitage; my waiter minds them for me. And so, I suspect I am
happy--if, curse it! I could but breathe better. O, come up to
see me. I'll give you a royal dinner at the Hermitage, and a
royal bed in the hemlock grove on the river-bank. Do come up,
the peace of Allah upon thee. Read my salaam to Im-Hanna."

And during his five months in the Bronx he did not sleep five nights
wit