s nearly white and his face somewhat deeply furrowed,
Mr. Dootleby's tall heavy figure stood straight toward the zenith, and
moved with an ease and celerity that many a younger man had envied. With
his antecedents I am not entirely familiar, but they say he was always
eccentric. I, for my part, shall like him none the less for this. They
say he was rich once, but that he never knew how to take care of his
money, and what part of it he did not give away slipped off of its own
accord.

They say he was past fifty when he married, and his bride was a young
woman, and when they went off together he was as frisky as a young
fellow of twenty-three. Then, they say, she died, and after that he took
but little interest in things, spending his time chiefly in such amiable
pursuits as the entertainment of the children playing in Central Park,
and the writing of an occasional article for the scientific papers, on
"The Peculiar Behavior of Alloys."

Despite the dinginess of his costume, Mr. Dootleby was a handsome old
man, and he looked very out of place on the Bowery. Not that good looks
are wanting in the Bowery, for many a crownless Cleopatra mingles with
its crowds. But Mr. Dootleby, as he stood in the shadow of the
coffee-vender's booth, seemed to be the one kind of being necessarily
incongruous with the midnight Bowery spectacle.

Mr. Dootleby stood and looked for full twenty minutes. In some of the
faces that passed him he saw only a careless sensuality brightened by
the flush of excitement. Others, somewhat older, were full of brazen
coarseness, and others, older still, bore that pitiful look of hopeless
regret, quickly changing to one that says as plainly as can be that the
time for thinking and caring has gone. Upon many was stamped the brand
of inborn infamy, their only inheritance.

[Illustration: THE BOWERY NIGHT-SCENE.]

Some hunted souls went by, their manner jaded and hapless, their steps
nervous and irresolute, and their eyes sweeping the streets before them,
never resting, never closed. A few as they passed scowled at him--even
at him, as if there were not one in all this world upon whom they had
not declared war. Want had marked most of them with unmistakable lines,
and crossing these were often others telling that they knew no better
than they did.

Mr. Dootleby watched awhile and then went on, pausing occasionally at
the corners to peer through the dark side streets, up at the big
tenement-houses--those ug