Part 13

"Woffski, you ev'dently zhink I zhrunker'n I am. I'm some zhrunk, Woffski, I know, some zhrunk, but 'taint 's bad's you zhink."

"I vill sbeak more blain."

"Do, ol' f'law, 'f you please."

"It vas selfishness vot der vorld make pad. It was being ignorant und selfish vot crime und bofferty pring to der many und vealth und ease to der few. Der beoples tondt see dot. Tey tondt know vot Anarchy mean. It vas all rest, all peace, nopoddy pad, no var, no bestilence. Dot is Anarchy, hey?

"I haf my life gif to der cause uf Anarchy. I haf dravel der vorlt over shbeaking, wriding, delling der beoples to make vay for der zoshul refolushun. Uf dey vill not, ve must der reech kill. We must remofe dem vich stand py der roat und stay der march of civilization. Some say 'Make haste! kill! kill!' I say, 'Nein, vait, gif der wretched beoples some chance to be safe. Tell dem vot is Anarchy. Etjucade dem.'

"Vell, den, dey listen to me. Dey say, 'Ve bow der vill before uf Herr Bludoffski, whose vordt vas goot. Ve vait. But how long? Ah, dat I can not tell. But I have decide I make von appeal. I gif der vorlt von chance to come ofer to Anarchy and be save. Ha! Se! I haf write a pook! I haf say der pook inside all apout Anarchy. I haf tell der peauties of der commune, vere no selfishness vas, no law, but efery man equal und none petter as some udder. I haf describe it all. Nopody can dot pook reat mitout he say ven he lay him down, 'I vil be an Anarchist.'"

Mr. Bludoffski had become intensely interested in his own remarks. He picked his manuscripts from the table and caressed them lovingly.

"See," he said, "dere vas der pook vich make mankind brudders. I tell you how you help. I vas poor. I haf no money. I lif on noddings, und dem noddings I peg. Ven I see you und you dot money gif me, I say 'Dis man he haf soul! He shall be save.' Den I say more as dot. I say he shall join his hand mit me. He shall print him, den million copies, send him de vorlt ofer, in all der lankviches, to all der peoples. Dink uf dot! You shall be great Anarchist as I. Ve go down mit fame togedder!"

He paused for Mr. O'Royster's reply, trembling with fanatical excitement. The reply was somewhat slow in coming. Mr. O'Royster, when his companion began to talk, had leaned his head on his arm and closed his eyes. He had preserved this attitude throughout the address and was now breathing hard.

"Vell!" said Bludoffski, impatiently.

Mr. O'Royster drew a more resonant breath, long, deep and mellow.

"He sleep!" cried Bludoffski, in scornful fury. "Der tog! He sleep ven I tell him--"

He sprang up, ran across the room and returned with a huge carving-knife. "I vill kill him!" he cried, and, indeed, made start to do it. But as suddenly he checked himself, tossed the knife on the floor, muttering, "Bah, he not fit to kill," and opened the door into the saloon. The Anarchist meeting had ended, but several persons were still sitting around the tables, drinking beer. He called to two of these, and said, in a tone of almost pitiful despair:

"Take dot man home. I not know who he vas. I not know vere he lif. Somebotty fin' oud. Look his pockets insite. Ask der boleecemans. Do any dings, but take him avay. He haf no soul, no mind, no heart, no noddings!"

IV.

MAGGIE.

Wrapped in contemplation and but little else, probably because his stock of contemplation largely exceeded his stock of else, Mr. Dootleby wandered down the Bowery. Midnight sounded out from the spire in St. Mark's Church just as Mr. Dootleby, having come from Broadway through Astor Place, turned about at the Cooper Union.

There was a touch of melancholy in Mr. Dootleby's expression as he looked down the big, brilliant Bowery, glowing with the light of a hundred electric burners and myriads of gas-jets, and seething with unnatural activity. He stopped a moment in the shadow thrown by the booth of a coffee and cake vender, and looked attentively into the faces of the throngs that passed him. He seemed to be thinking hard.

In truth, it is a suggestive place, is the Bowery. Day and night are all the same to it. It never gets up and it never goes to bed. It never takes a holiday. It never keeps Lent. It indulges in no sentiments. It acknowl-edges no authority that bids it remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. But from year's end to year's end it bubbles, and boils, and seethes, and frets while the daylight lasts, and in the glare of its brighter night it plunges headlong into carousal!

Mr. Dootleby had a great habit of walking at night, though he seldom came down town so far as this. His apartments were in Harlem, and usually, after he had taken his dinner and played a rubber of whist, he found himself sufficiently exercised by a stroll as far as Forty-second Street. But to-night he felt a trifle restless, and journeyed on.

Though his hair was nearly white and his face somewhat deeply furrowed, Mr. Dootleby's tall heavy figure stood straight toward the zenith, and moved with an ease and celerity that many a younger man had envied. With his antecedents I am not entirely familiar, but they say he was always eccentric. I, for my part, shall like him none the less for this. They say he was rich once, but that he never knew how to take care of his money, and what part of it he did not give away slipped off of its own accord.

They say he was past fifty when he married, and his bride was a young woman, and when they went off together he was as frisky as a young fellow of twenty-three. Then, they say, she died, and after that he took but little interest in things, spending his time chiefly in such amiable pursuits as the entertainment of the children playing in Central Park, and the writing of an occasional article for the scientific papers, on "The Peculiar Behavior of Alloys."

Despite the dinginess of his costume, Mr. Dootleby was a handsome old man, and he looked very out of place on the Bowery. Not that good looks are wanting in the Bowery, for many a crownless Cleopatra mingles with its crowds. But Mr. Dootleby, as he stood in the shadow of the coffee-vender's booth, seemed to be the one kind of being necessarily incongruous with the midnight Bowery spectacle.

Mr. Dootleby stood and looked for full twenty minutes. In some of the faces that passed him he saw only a careless sensuality brightened by the flush of excitement. Others, somewhat older, were full of brazen coarseness, and others, older still, bore that pitiful look of hopeless regret, quickly changing to one that says as plainly as can be that the time for thinking and caring has gone. Upon many was stamped the brand of inborn infamy, their only inheritance.

Some hunted souls went by, their manner jaded and hapless, their steps nervous and irresolute, and their eyes sweeping the streets before them, never resting, never closed. A few as they passed scowled at him--even at him, as if there were not one in all this world upon whom they had not declared war. Want had marked most of them with unmistakable lines, and crossing these were often others telling that they knew no better than they did.

Mr. Dootleby watched awhile and then went on, pausing occasionally at the corners to peer through the dark side streets, up at the big tenement-houses--those ugly nurseries of vice--from whose black shadows came many of these that had been christened into crime. But in the Bowery itself there was no gloomy spot. Light streamed from every window, and flooded the pavements. The street-cars whirled along. Even the bony creatures that drew them caught the spirit of this feverish thoroughfare. From every other doorway, shielded by cloth or wicker screens, came the sounds of twanging harps and scraping fiddles, the click of glasses and the shrill chatter and laughter of discordant voices.

Here and there, in front of a bewildering canvas, upon which, in the gayest of gay colors, mountainous fat women, prodigious giants, scaly mermaids, wild men from Zululand, living skeletons, and three-headed girls were painted, stood clamorous gentlemen in tights, urgently importuning passers-by to enter the establishments they represented, whereof the glories and mysteries could be but too feebly told in words. And upon the sidewalks all about him, swarms of itinerant musicians, instantaneous photographers, dealers in bric-a-brac, toilet articles, precious stones, soda water, and other needful and nutritious wares, urged themselves upon Mr. Dootleby's attention.

He walked leisurely on, moralizing as he went, until he had passed Chatham Square, and had got into the somberer district below. He turned a corner somewhere, thinking to walk around the block and find his way back into the Bowery. But the more corners he rounded the more he found ever at his elbow, and the conviction began to make its way into his mind that he had lost his bearings.