pet-slippers and undershirt and armed
with an empty beer-pail. With this he faded away in the corner saloon,
to come forth again with his peace-offering.

With such observations I solaced myself and whiled away the time.
Humanity in the rough is to me fully as interesting as the dull stones
picked up in Brazil or the Cape Colony. Some are hopelessly flawed,
while others need but patient grinding to develop into diamonds of the
first water.

Nearly a half an hour had gone by, and I had seated myself upon the
railing, in a position once dear to me when I shared a fence with Sadie
Briggs, aged fourteen, and thought that the ultimate had come to me in
the way of love and passion. Fortunate Sadie! She afterwards married a
blacksmith and did her duty to the world by raising a large family,
while I pounded typewriter keys and wrote of imaginary loves, in
shirt-sleeves and slippers, lucky in the egotistic peace of the enviable
mortal responsible for no human being's bread and butter but his own.

Then Frieda and Frances appeared. The latter held her baby in her arms,
surely feeling that it had received enough vicarious attention.

"Why, Dave!" exclaimed the former. "I'm awfully sorry you waited so
long. Our little darling was sleeping ever so comfy, like a blessed
angel, and we sat down, while Madame Boivin rested from her ironing, and
we just talked about starch and cockroaches and things, and then Paul
awoke and we were afraid he might cry in the street and it was nearly
time anyway and--and he was ever so greedy. And now he's sleeping
again."

I reflected that, gastronomically, Master Paul had probably enjoyed
himself better than ourselves. He had not been hurried. His little lips
had not been scalded, nor had he been compelled to hasten over a
_ravigote_ that should have been eaten in seemly leisure and respect. I
wished he had been able to realize the compensations he was getting now
for whatever might come later on. For him I trust there will be little
of sorrow, and yet there must be some, since pain and shadow are
indispensable, in this world, to the appreciation of light and of ease.

I noticed how well the young mother walked with her burden. It appeared
to lend her form added grace and to complete her beauty.

On the steps leading to the front door of Mrs. Milliken's refuge nearly
all the lodgers were assembled, taking the cool of the evening. The two
girls who sold candy clamored for a view of little Paul. Th