Chapter 15

The covering on the ten-cent bed was changed once a month; if a man wanted toilet accommodations, he paid for them elsewhere. The Bismarck never had a bath, nor a wash-basin.

A ten- or twelve-cent guest had a wardrobe; it was seldom used, but it was there. At the head of each cot stood this tall, narrow receptacle for the clothing and valuables of the guests, but in the old days wise guests slept in their clothes. I have known of unsuspecting wayfarers who deposited their belongings in the wardrobe, locked it, and hid the key under the pillow, and next morning had to wrap themselves in newspapers or in a borrowed sheet until they could reach a junk-store. The key was safe, but the wardrobe and contents had disappeared.

On the second floor was the sitting-room. There was a stove for winter months, and against the wall on four sides of the room were built benches. There was but one chair in the room; that was the clerk's. The walls were whitewashed; the windows were covered most of the time with cobwebs and dirt, and the floor was littered with rubbish.

The clerk was a quiet man by the name of Allen. He had a bouncer named McBriarty--his nickname was "Gar." The bouncer had an understudy who was called Frank--"Big Frank." The house was owned at that time by a banker named Barsotti.

_The Gathering of the Men who Were_

Every afternoon, winter and summer, about five o'clock, the men began to gather about the little iron gate, and as Big Frank swung it back, they filed through the slit in single file and ascended the stairs.

Ten-cent men registered. Bunk-men threw down a nickel and two cents and became guests at large. Guests who registered were handed a chunk of wood too large to enter an ordinary pocket; attached to the wood was the key of the wardrobe. A small discount was made on a week's lodging paid in advance, but few took advantage of it, for nobody ever expected to stay a week; some had been there for years, but they paid each night as they entered, for they expected each night to be their last. Old customers looked into each other's faces at evening with a glance which meant: "Hello! back again?"

I saw a woman there once. She came to look for a son, and sat by the door, scanning the faces as they passed her. Over a hundred men lingered around the sitting-room that night. At least a score of them repassed her, just to get a glimpse of her face, in which, though it was that of a stranger, many of them retraced their steps back over life's jagged roadway. They asked the clerk questions that needed no answer, just to get near for a moment. They tiptoed across the floor; they spoke in whispers; and they indignantly hustled several half-drunken lodgers out of the room. Her anxious face set them all thinking; it created an atmosphere in which those men of life's undertow grew tender and kind.

I tabulated, by the aid of the clerk, the ages, nationalities, and occupations of one hundred of them. Fifty were German, twenty Irish, sixteen native Americans; the rest were from the ends of the earth. Each of them gave an occupation; there were barbers, tinkers, teamsters, tailors, waiters, laborers, longshoremen, painters, paper-hangers, and scissors-grinders. One man put "banker" opposite his name. This led to an extra inquiry.

"Of course," he said, "I am for the time being down and out; but banking is my business."

Their trades were of the past--their vitality had oozed out, their grip on life was relaxed; if it ever tightened again, the first result of it would be another grade of surroundings.

In order to find out how they got a living, I followed some of these men through the maelstrom of city life. I found some distributing circulars. Others sold pencils, matches, laces. They lounged around saloons, sticking their dirty fists into the free-lunch dishes. They played lame, sick, halt, blind; they panhandled on the streets and alleys--especially the alleys, where they fared best. A dozen or more attended the ferries, waiting for a chance to carry baggage. They were unfit for hard work--they would not die.

Twelve cents a day kept most of them. When they didn't manage seven cents for a bunk, they "carried the banner"--walked the streets or stood in a "dead-house" saloon, where there are no seats and where a man must stand. Many of them, when worsted completely, would "hit the bread-line," after midnight, not so much for the bread as for a place to stand where they would be immune from the policeman's club.

Despite some plain lessons to the contrary, I believed most of them to be victims of laziness; but in a single year twelve of them dropped on the floor dead: to these I gave the benefit of the doubt.

"_The Hardest Work Is No Work at All_"

One Sunday night I told a hundred men in the Bismarck that the reason they had no work was, that they were loafers and didn't want work. This was in accordance with my theory--the prevailing theory--that poverty is the child of sin, that lack of work is the fruit of shiftlessness. I offered to change clothes with any man in the house, and to go out in the world and show him how to get a job. The challenge was accepted instantly--by an Irishman.

I wisely changed the article of agreement regarding clothes; I got up my own outfit! Next morning, at half-past five, I met Tim, the man who had accepted the challenge, and we proceeded to the labor-market.

From the "want" columns of the morning papers we selected a few bits of labor bait. We ran them down, failed to find anything, and turned to the shops and factories on the West Side. The answers were monotonous. "Full up," they said, or a card at the door or gate announced that the firm had a "full complement." I felt like a mendicant. I found myself begging for work in a subservient tone and manner. In one place, I remember, I said, "For God's sake." The superintendent laughed and waved us away.

"The harrudest work, for sure, is no worruk at all, at all!" said my companion, by way of sympathy.

It was mid-afternoon; I was growing desperate with my sense of failure, and at this point I launched a scheme which had been growing in my mind for hours.

"Keep close to me now, Tim," I said, and I led him into a drug-store at the corner of Grand Street and the Bowery.

"Sir," I said to the clerk, "you are not accustomed to giving credit, I know; but perhaps you might suspend your rule for once and trust a stranger for a very small sum?"

"What is't?" asked the clerk, with something of a sneer.

"I am hungry and thirsty. I have looked for work since five o'clock, and have utterly failed to find it. Now I have a scheme; I know it will work. Oxalic acid eats away rust. If I had five cents' worth, I could make a dollar an hour--I know I could."

The clerk listened and looked. He was good enough to say that I didn't talk like a bum, though I looked like one. He inquired anxiously if I was "off my hook." At last he said: "By ----! I've been on the Bowery a long time, and haven't been sold once. If you're a skin-game man, I'll throw up my job!" I got the acid.

Then I played the same game in a tailor-shop for rags and in a hardware store for some polishing-paste. The stock cost fifteen cents--on credit.

There used to be a big dry-goods store on the east side of Chatham Square. It had two immense brass signs.

"Nawthin' doin'," said the man, when I applied for the job of cleaning them. Nevertheless, I cleaned and polished a square foot of one big sign. The boss looked at it, and then at Tim and me.

"I'll clean both for a dime," I said.

"Well, go ahead," he said. The Cleaning Company went from store to store until we had enough money for our bills, a meal, and a surplus in the treasury.

As we sat down to dinner at "Beefsteak John's," I handed Tim the surplus, and rather impatiently probed for his acknowledgment of my victory. I had made good, and wanted all that was due me.

"What do you think of it, Tim?" I asked, with an air of satisfaction and confidence.

"Shure, ye're a janyus, yer Honor; no doubt av that at all, at all; but----"

"Go on!" I said.

"I was jist switherin', yer Honor, what a wontherful thing ut is that a man kin always hev worruk whin he invints ut!"

"Well, that's worth knowing," I said disappointedly. "Did you learn anything else?"

"Well, it takes to do that thrick what most av us hevn't got; ut takes brains, sor--ut takes brains!"

"Why don't you have brains, then?"

He looked dumbly at me, and hung his head.

"I dunno--I dunno," he muttered.

The men at the Bismarck needed no urging to attend the meeting the following Sunday. Grogan had told his story; they were anxious to hear mine. The room was crowded to suffocation. They stood on the benches; they sat on the window-sills--everywhere; from all directions, the eyes of that dull, heavy human mass were penetrating me.

I was frank and explicit in my analysis of the experiment. I had no idea that Grogan would speak, but he did, and his speech was pointed.

"Whin ye talk religion, mister," he said, "ye're O.K.; but whin ye say we're lazy hobos, all av us, ye're spakin' round the rim av yer hat!"

Grogan made the crowd laugh when he told them how I had been turned away from shops and factories.

"Some av us poor divils hev done that same," he said, "fur weeks--until, begobs, we wisht we wur dead or hung or anythin'!"

I was about to close the meeting, when an old man known as "Judge" shuffled out to the front and asked permission to speak. He was a man of education whom I had not hitherto been able to engage in conversation.

The Judge administered a scathing rebuke, closing with a touch of humor, which was lost on the crowd. I stood there in the midst of a handful of friends, who mingled their pity with indignation. I took what belonged to me, and thanked the old man. The experiment exploded some of my theories and sent me to the school of facts.

_Graf von "Habenichts"_

Nothing in the life of the bunk-house was more noticeable than the way men of intelligence grouped themselves together. Besides the Judge, there was an ex-Parliamentarian, an ex-lawyer, an ex-soldier of Victoria, and a German Graf. I named them the "Ex-Club." Every morning they separated as though forever. Every night they returned, and looked at one another in surprise.

At election-time both political parties had access to the register, and every lodger was the recipient of two letters. Between elections a letter was always a matter of sensational interest; it lay on the clerk's table, waiting to be claimed, and every lodger inspected it as he passed. Scores of men who never expected a letter would pick it up, handle it in a wistful and affectionate manner, and regretfully lay it down again. I have often wished I could analyze the thoughts of these men as they handled tenderly these rare visitors conducted by Uncle Sam into the bunk-house of Blind Alley.

It was a big letter with red seals and an aristocratic monogram that first drew attention to a new-comer who had signed himself "Hans Schwanen." "One-eyed Dutchy" had whispered to some of his friends that the recipient of the letter was a real German Graf.

He was about sixty years of age, short, rotund, corpulent. His head was bullet-shaped and set well down on his shoulders. His clothes were baggy and threadbare, his linen soiled and shabby. He had blue eyes, harsh red hair, and a florid complexion. When he arrived, he brought three valises. Everybody wondered what he could have in them.

The bouncer was consumed with a desire to examine the contents, and, as bouncer and general floor-manager of the house, expected that they would naturally be placed under his care. When, however, it was announced that the new-comer had engaged One-eyed Dutchy as his valet, the bouncer swore and said "he might go to ----."

There was something peculiar and mysterious in a ten-cent guest of the Bismarck hiring a valet. "Habenichts" kept aloof from the crowd. He had no friends, and would permit no one to establish any intercourse with him.

Dutchy informed an intimate friend that the Graf received a check from Germany every three months. While it lasted, it was the valet's duty to order, pay for, and keep a record of all food and refreshment. When the bouncer told me of these things, I tried very hard to persuade the Graf to dine at my house; but he declined without even the formality of thanks. After a few months the revenue of the mysterious stranger dried up. One-eyed Dutchy was discharged.

A snow-storm found the old Graf with an attack of rheumatism, and helpless. Then he was forced to relinquish his ten-cent cot and move upstairs to a seven-cent bunk. When he was able to get out again, he came back, dragging up the rickety old stairs a scissors-grinder. Several of the guests offered a hand, but he spurned them all, and stuck to his job until he got it up.

Another snow-storm brought back his rheumatism; he got permission to sit indoors. The old wheel lay idle in the corner; he was hungry, and his pipe had been empty for a day and a night, but still he sat bolt upright, in pain, alone, with starvation staring him in the face. The third day of his involuntary fast he got a letter. It contained a one-dollar bill. The sender was watching at a safe distance, and he recorded that the Graf's puzzled look almost developed into a smile. He gathered himself together and hobbled out to a near-by German saloon. Next day came the first sign of surrender. He accepted a commission to take a census of the house. This at least helped to thaw him out, but it didn't last long.

Because his rheumatism prevented him from pushing his wheel through the streets, I secured him a corner in a locksmith's basement. He had not been there many weeks when he disappeared. The locksmith told a story which seemed scarcely credible. He said the old Graf had sold his wheel and given the proceeds to an Irishwoman to help defray the funeral expenses of her child.

Some months later, Allen, the clerk, got a postal-card from One-eyed Dutchy. He was on the Island, and the Graf and he were working together on the ash gang. I helped to get him off the Island--at his own urgent solicitation. I myself considered him much better off where he was.

When the Graf returned to the bunk-house, every one who had ever seen him noted a wonderful change. He no longer lived in a shell. He had become human, and took an interest in what was going on. One night, when a few of the Ex-Club were exchanging reminiscences, he was prevailed upon to tell his story. He asked us to keep it a secret for ten years. The time is up, and I am the only one of that group alive.

_The Tale of the Old German Noble_

"In 1849 it was; my brother and I students were in Heidelberg. Then broke out the Revolution. Two years less of age was I, so to him was due my father's title and most of the estate. 'What is revolution?' five of us students asked. 'We know not; we will study,' we all said, and we did. For King and fatherland our study make us jealous, but my brother was not so.

"'I am revolutionist!' he says, and we are mad to make him different.

"'The King is one,' he said, 'and the people are many, and they are oppressed.'

"I hate my brother, and curse him, till in our room he weeps for sorrow. I curse him until he leaves.

"By and by in the barricades he finds himself fighting against the King. In the fight the rebels are defeated and my brother escapes. Many are condemned and shot. Not knowing my heart, my mother writes to me that my brother is at home.

"I lie in my bed, thinking--thinking. Many students have been shot for treason. Love of King and fatherland, and desire to be Graf, are two thoughts in my heart.

"I inform. My brother is arrested, and in fortress is he put to be shot.

"Four of us students of patriotism go to see. My heart sinks to see my brother, so white is he and fearless. His eyes are bright like fire, and he stands so cool and straight.

"'I have nothing but love,' he says; 'I love the cause of truth and justice. To kill me is not to kill the truth; where you spill my blood will revolution grow, as flowers grow by water. I forgive.'

"Then he sees me. 'Hans!' he says, 'Hans!' He holds out his arms. 'I want to kiss my brother,' he says. The general he says, 'All right.'

"But I love the King. 'No! I have no brother! I will not a traitor kiss!'

"My Gott! how my brother looks! He looks already dead--so full of sorrow is he.

"A sharp crack of guns! They chill my heart, and down dead falls my brother.

"I go away, outside glad, but in my heart I feel burn the fires of hell. Father and mother in one year die for sorrow. Then I am Graf.

"I desire to be of society, but society will not--it is cold. Guests do not come to my table. Servants do not stay. They tell that they hear my mother weep for sorrow in the night. I laugh at them, but in my heart I know them true. Peasants in the village hide from me as I come to them.

"But my mind is worse. Every night I hear the crack of the rifles--the sound of the volley that was my brother's death. Soldiers I get, men of the devil-dare kind, to stay with me. They do not come back; they tell that they hear tramp, tramp, tramp of soldiers' feet.

"One night, with the soldiers, I take much wine, for I say, 'I shall be drunk and not hear the guns at night.'

"We drink in our noble hall. Heavy doors are chained, windows barred, draperies close arranged, and the great lamp burns dim. We drink, we sing, we curse God und das Gesindel. 'We ourselves,' we say, 'are gods.'

"Then creeps close the hour for the guns. My tongue is fast and cannot move; my brow is wet, and frozen is my blood.

"Boom! go the guns; then thunder shakes the castle, lightning flashes through draperies, and I fall as dead.

"Was I in a dream? I know not. I did not believe in God; I did not believe in heaven or in hell; yet do I see my past life go past me in pictures--pictures of light in frames of fire: Two boys, first,--Max, my brother, and I,--playing as children; then my mother, weeping for great sorrow; then the black walls of the great fortress--my brother with arms outstretched. Again my blood is frozen, again creeps my skin, and I hear the volley and see him fall to death. I fear. I scream loud that I love the King, but in my ear comes a voice like iron--'Liar!' A little girl then, with hair so golden, comes and wipes the stain of blood from my brow. I see her plain.

"Then I awake. I am alone; the light is out; blood is on my face. I am paralyzed with fear, so I cannot stand. When I can walk, I leave, for I think maybe that only in Germany do I hear the guns. For twenty years I live in Spain. Still do I hear the guns.

"I go to France, but yet every night at the same hour freezes my blood and I hear the death volley.

"I come to America, which I have hated, yet never a night is missed. It is at the same hour. What I hate comes to me. Whatever I fear is mine. To run away from something is for me to meet it. My estate is gone; money I have not. I sink like a man in a quicksand, down, down, down. I come here. Lower I cannot."

"One day in the Bend, where das Gesindel live, I see the little girl--she of the golden hair, who wiped my stain away.

"But she is dead. I know for sure the face. What it means I know not. Again I fall as dead.

"I have one thing in the world left--only one; it is my scissors-grinder. I sell it and give all the money to bury her. It is the first--it is the only good I ever did. Then, an outcast, I go out into the world where no pity is. I sit me down in a dark alley; strange is my heart, and new.

"It is time for the guns--yet is my blood warm! I wait. The volley comes not!

"The hour is past!

"'My Gott! My Gott!' I say. 'Can this be true?' I wait one, two, three minutes; it comes not. I scream for joy--I scream loud! I feel an iron hand on me. I am put in prison. Yet is the prison filled with light--yet am I in heaven. The guns are silent."

One day a big letter with several patches of red sealing-wax and an aristocratic monogram arrived at the bunk-house.

Nearly two hundred men handled it and stood around until the Graf arrived. Every one felt a personal interest in the contents. It was "One-eyed Dutchy" who handed it to the owner, and stood there watching out of his single eye the face of his former master. The old man smiled as he folded the letter and put it into his pocket, saying as he did so: "By next ship I leave for Hamburg to take life up where I laid it down."

_A Statesman Under a Cloud_

I was sitting on the bench near the door in the bunk-house one day at twilight, when I noticed a profile silhouetted against the window. I had seen only one profile like that in my life, and that was when I was a boy.

I moved closer. The man sat like a statue. His face was very pale, and he was gazing vacantly at the walls in the rear of the building.

Finally I went over and sat down beside him.

"Good evening," he said quietly, in answer to my salutation.

I looked into his face--a face I knew when a boy, a face familiar to the law-makers of Victoria for a quarter century.

I called him by name. At the sound of his own name his paleness turned to an ashy yellow.

"In Heaven's name," I said, "what are you doing here?"

He looked at me with an expression of excruciating pain on his face, and said:

"I have traveled some thousands of miles in order to be alone; if you have any kindness, any pity, leave me."

"Pardon me," I said, "for intruding."

That night the Ex-Club invited him to take part in their deliberations. He refused, and his manner showed that he considered the invitation an insult.

I had known this man as a brilliant orator, a religious leader, the champion of a sect. In a city across the sea I had sat as a bare-legged boy on an upturned barrel, part of an immense crowd, listening to the flow of his oratory. Next day he left the bunk-house. Some weeks afterward I found him on a curbstone, preaching to whoever of the pedestrians would listen.

At the close of his address I introduced myself again. He took me to his new lodging, and I put the questions that filled my mind. For answer, he gave me the House of Commons Blue Book, which explained the charge hanging over him. Almost daily, for weeks, I heard him on his knees proclaim his innocence of the unmentionable crime with which he was charged. After some weeks of daily association, he said to me: "I believe you are sent of God to guide me, and I am prepared to take your advice."

My advice was ready. He turned pale as I told him to pack his trunk and take the next ship for England.

"Face the storm like a man!" I urged, and he said:

"It will kill me, but I will do it."

He did it, and it swept him to prison, to shame, and to oblivion.

_A St. Francis of the Bunk-house_

One Sunday afternoon I was going through the dormitories, calling the lodgers to prayer. On one of the ten-cent cots an old white-haired man was reading a life of Buffalo Bill. His face was marred by a scar over one of the eyes. He spoke gently and with a pronounced Irish accent.

"I am an Episcopalian," he said, when I invited him below to the meeting.

"We have all denominations," I assured him. Everybody in the bunk-house had a connection, more or less remote, with some sect.

"Say," said the bouncer, concerning the old man, "dat ol' duffer's got de angel goods on him O.K."

His name was Edward Dowling. He was a gentleman. He had soldiered under Sir Colin Campbell and Sir Henry Havelock in India. Later he owned a ranch in the West. Then an accident deprived him of the use of an eye, and he spent all he had in trying to preserve his sight. Homeless and penniless on the streets of New York, he had learned to do tinkering and the mending of umbrellas.

In his poverty he drifted to the bunk-house.