a-walkin' the streets for two weeks lookin' for work.
Last night I slep' in a coal-bunker down by the docks,
under the bridge, and I was goin' there agin when you
come along. I never tried to rob nobody before. Don't
run me in--let me go this time. Look into my face;
you can see for yourself I'm hungry! I'll never do it
agin. Try me, won't you?" His tears were choking
him, the elbow of his ragged sleeve pressed to his eyes.

Felix had listened without moving, trying to make
up his mind, noting the drawn, haggard face, the
staring eyes and dry, fevered lips--all evidences of
either hunger or vice, he was uncertain which.

Then gradually, as the man's sobs continued, there
stole over him that strange sense of kinship in pain
which comes to us at times when confronted with
another's agony. The differences between them--the
rags of the one and the well-brushed garments of the
other, the fact that one skulked with his misery in dark
alleys while the other bore his on the open highways--
counted as nothing. He and this outcast were bound
together by the common need of those who find the
struggle overwhelming. Until that moment his own
sufferings had absorbed him. Now the throb of the
world's pain came to him and sympathies long dormant
began to stir.

"Straighten up and let me see your face," he said
at last, intent on the tramp's abject misery. "Out