r the rail. "Say--he ain't
come up." They waited.

The policeman strolled leisurely down in response to their repeated
cries. "_Who_ ain't come up? What, him--the drunk?" The officer leaned
lethargically over the rail. "What'm I gonter do? Why, leave 'm. He
ain't got no folks gonter sit up nights waitin' fer 'm. Now you young
ones go along home to your suppers," he indulgently commanded, "and you
little fellers, if you want crabs, be 'round here early. By to-morrow
this place will be fairly swarmin' with them."

LIFE[7]

BY BEN HECHT

From _The Little Review_

[7] Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson. Copyright, 1916, by Ben
Hecht.

The sun was shining in the dirty street.

Old women with shapeless bodies waddled along on their way to market.

Bearded old men who looked like the fathers of Jerusalem walked
flatfooted, nodding back and forth.

"The tread of the processional surviving in Halsted Street," thought
Moisse, the young dramatist who was moving with the crowd.

Children sprawled in the refuse-laden alleys. One of them ragged and
clotted with dirt stood half-dressed on the curbing and urinated into
the street.

Wagons rumbled, filled with fruits and iron and rags and vegetables.

Human voices babbled above the noises of the traffic. Moisse watched the
lively scene.

"Every day it's the same," he thought; "the same smells, the same noise
and people swarming over the pavements. I am the only one in the street
whose soul is awake. There's a pretty girl looking at me. She suspects
the condition of my soul. Her fingers are dirty. Why doesn't she buy
different shoes? She thinks I am lost. In five years she will be fat.
In ten years she will waddle with a shawl over her head."

The young dramatist smiled.

"Good God," he thought, "where do they come from? Where are they going?
No place to no place. But always moving, shuffling, waddling, crying
out. The sun shines on them. The rain pours on them. It burns. It
freezes. To-day they are bright with color. To-morrow they are gray with
gloom. But they are always the same, always in motion."

The young dramatist stopped on the corner and looking around him spied a
figure sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the wall of a building.

The figure was an old man.

He had a long white beard.

He had his legs tucked under him and an upturned tattered hat rested in
his lap.

His thin face was raised and the sun beat down on it, but his e