me. Then Pipes and de Sheriff went back on me and I didn't care. Bowser
stuck to me the longest. He got de kids took care of. He don't know I'm
out, or he'd turn up. I tried to find him, but nobody don't know where
he was a-workin'--none of de barrooms I've tried. Oh, but it was tough!
But it's all right now, d'ye hear? All right! I got a job up in Harlem,
see? I'm gittin' orders for coal." And he touched a long book that stuck
out of his breast-pocket. "And I've got a room near where I work. And I
tell ye another thing," and his hand sought mine, and a peculiar light
came into his eyes, "I got de kids wid me. You just oughter see de
boy--legs on him thick as your arm! I toll ye that's a comfort, and
don't you forgit it. And de little gal! Ain't like her mother?
what!--well, I should smile!"



HIS LAST CENT<

Jack Waldo stood in his studio gazing up at the ceiling, or, to be more
exact, at a Venetian church-lamp--which he had just hung and to which he
had just attached a red silk tassel bought that morning of a bric-a-brac
dealer whose shop was in the next street. There was a bare spot in that
corner of his sumptuously appointed room which offended Waldo's
sensitive taste--a spot needing a touch of yellow brass and a note of
red--and the silk tassel completed the color-scheme. The result was a
combination which delighted his soul; Jack had a passion for having his
soul delighted and an insatiable thirst for the things that did the
delighting, and could no more resist the temptation to possess them when
exposed for sale than a confirmed drunkard could resist a favorite
beverage held under his nose. That all of these precious objects of
bigotry and virtue were beyond his means, and that most of them then