heads thrown back or drooping, filthy and dishevelled, and exhaling a strong odor of alcohol. A very big attendant, with a very long face and very small eyes went around among them, striking them on the shoulder and shaking them in his efforts to keep them awake. They would open their eyes, stare stupidly a while, and immediately close them again. One who was not asleep but thoroughly drunk, at first began to mumble to himself, then gradually raising his voice, he emitted a string of hoarse and filthy language, accentuated by the wildest gestures. The attendant seized him by the collar, and with remarkable dexterity flung him onto the sidewalk, where he lay for some time, continuing to growl and curse.
Rodman left the place with a feeling of disgust and despair, and walked about for some time.
“Good Heavens!” he said to himself, “so these are the people to be found in these quarters, these the people who create the baffling problems, these the men 1 must work for. What is one to do?”
Then he felt ashamed of these feelings and called them downright squeamishness and cowardice. He entered the first loging-house he reached, paid his fifteen cents for a bed and passed the night amid the snoring and stench of the large and bare room where the beds were arranged as in a military hospital.
He did not fall asleep till late. In the middle of the night he woke up and the events of the day passed through his mind. A sudden thought he occurred to him. He remembered that he had not seen a single Jewish face among all those of the "submerged tenth." He thought it queer that this should have occurred to him. "What difference does that make?" he asked himself and fell asleep again.
III.
The morning light beat dull and melancholy against the small, dirty windowpanes. Rodman awoke, sat up in his bed and gazed around. In various parts of the room the men were beginning to rise. They sat up, some in tattered shirts, others revealing bare scraggy breasts, and with trembling movements pulled on their shabby clothes. The atmosphere was dense with the strong smell of human bodies and the pungent odor of alcohol. Rodman watched the men shuffle out of the rooms one by one, the silence sometimes broken
by a grunt or a raucous laugh. And as he watched them the same feeling that he experienced the night before assailed him with redoubled force. He dressed himself hastily and left the place.
Outside, the street was thronged with men and women on their way to work, the trains roared overhead, the bells of the cars clanged loudly and the trucks clattered deafeningly. Rodman examined the crowd, all flowing in the same direction. It seemed to be almost entirely composed of young men and young women and the latter appeared to be in the majority. They walked steadily and briskly, the young men casting glances at the girls, who proceeded with a strong, graceful gait, lunch bags under their arms, faces young and fresh in the morning air. Here and there, however, Rodman saw one of the "submerged tenth" slinking lazily and in an opposite direction in the midst of the crowd. Where were they going?
“No more nights with them,” he said to himself. “I’ll lodge somewhere else. These young people seem to belong to a different world,” he continued as he made his way down the Bowery and emerged into a street at right angles to the first and where on a corner lamp he read: “Henry Street.” He stopped in front of one of the big tenement-houses that lined both sides of the street and on a small sign pasted to the wall he read the following: “Furnished Room to Let. Inquire 4th floor, front, Felsberg.” Rodman’s mind was made up on the instant. Valise in hand, he climbed the four flights of narrow stairs and stopped in front of a door in a dark, narrow hallway.
A ringing peal of childish silvery laughter came through the door, followed by a quick patter of little feet and the melodious cry of a maiden's voice: "Now you have him!" Rodman stopped to listen and gathered that two small children and an older person were hilariously at play inside. He knocked on the door, and instantly there was a hush.
"Quick now, run and hide!" he heard the same voice. "The boogy is coming."
Then the door opened and Rodman saw before him the figure of a girl about nineteen years old, her face somewhat flushed with the excitement of the game. Her thick black hair was wound in a large knot on the crown of her head.