alk to me about her folks.

There was some four million people in a space about the size of our
ranch. There was theatres to go to--but who wants to go to the theatre
on Christmas?--it's like going to church on the Fourth of July. There
were dime muzhums, penny vawdevilles, dance-halls.

There was a big dinner for news-boys. The Salvation Army and the
Volunteers gave feeds to the poor. But I couldn't qualify. I wasn't
poor. I had no home, no friends, no nothing.

The streets got deserteder and deserteder. A few other wretches was
marooned like me in the hotel corridors. We looked at each other like
sneak-thieves patroling the same street. Waiters glanced at us pitiful
as much as to say, "If it wasn't for shrimps like you, I'd be home with
my kids."

The worst of it was, I knew there were thousands of people in town in
just my fix. Perhaps some of them were old friends of mine that I'd have
been tickled to death to fore-gather with; or leastways, people from my
State. Texas is a big place, but we'd have been brothers and sisters--or
at least cousins once removed--for Christmas' sake. But they were
scattered around at the St. Regis or the Mills Hotel, the Martha
Washington or somewhere, while I was at the Waldorf-hyphen-Astoria.

It was like the two men that Dickens--I believe it was Dickens--tells
about: Somebody gives A a concertina, but he can't play on it; winter
coming on and no overcoat; he can't wear the concertina any more than
he can tootle it. A few blocks away is a fellow, Mr. B. He can play a
concertina something grand, but he hasn't got one and his fingers itch.
He spends all his ready money on a brand-new overcoat, and just then
his aunt sends him another one. He thinks he'll just swap one of them
overcoats for a concertina. So he advertises in an exchange column.
About the same time, A advertises that he'll trade one house-broken
concertina for a nice overcoat. But does either A or B ever see B's or
A's advertisements? Not on your beautiful daguerreotype.

That was the way with us-all in New York. The town was full of lonesome
strangers, and we went moping round, stumbling over each other and not
daring to speak.

They call us "transients" here. It's like a common sailor that's lost at
sea; he's only a "casualty." So us poor, homeless dogs in New York are
only transients. Why, do you know, I was that lonely I could have stood
out in the square like a lonely old cow in the rain, and just mooed for
so