The night dews and the snakes, and the dogs that kept
sniffing and growling half the night in the near distance, had made me
tired of sleeping in the fields. The dead were much better company.
They minded their own business, and let a fellow alone. . . .
[He found no employment in New Brunswick and after six weeks in a
neighboring brickyard he returned to New York, to be again disappointed
in an effort to enlist.]
The city was full of idle men. My last hope, a promise of employment
in a human-hair factory, failed, and, homeless and penniless, I joined
the great army of tramps, wandering about the streets in the daytime
with the one aim of somehow stilling the hunger that gnawed at my
vitals, and fighting at night with vagrant curs or outcasts as
miserable as myself for the protection of some sheltering ash-bin or
doorway. I was too proud in all my misery to beg. I do not believe I
ever did. But I remember well a basement window at the downtown
Delmonico's, the silent appearance of my ravenous face at which, at a
certain hour in the evening, always evoked a generous supply of
meat-bones and rolls from a white-capped cook who spoke French.
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