第13章

THE FIFTH WHEEL.

The ranks of the Bed Line moved closer together; for it was cold.

They were alluvial deposit of the stream of life lodged in the delta of Fifth Avenue and Broadway.The Bed Liners stamped their freezing feet, looked at the empty benches in Madison Square whence Jack Frost had evicted them, and muttered to one another in a confusion of tongues.The Flatiron Building, with its impious, cloud-piercing architecture looming mistily above them on the opposite delta, might well have stood for the tower of Babel, whence these polyglot idlers had been called by the winged walking delegate of the Lord.

Standing on a pine box a head higher than his flock of goats, the Preacher exhorted whatever transient and shifting audience the north wind doled out to him.It was a slave market.Fifteen cents bought you a man.You deeded him to Morpheus; and the recording angel gave you credit.

The preacher was incredibly earnest and unwearied.he had looked over the list of things one may do for one's fellow man, and had assumed for himself the task of putting to bed all who might apply at his soap box on the nights of Wednesday and Sunday.

That left but five nights for other philanthropists to handle; and had they done their part as well, this wicked city might have become a vast Arcadian dormitory where all might snooze and snore the happy hours away, letting problem plays and the rent man and business go to the deuce.

The hour of eight was but a little while past; sightseers in a small, dark mass of pay ore were gathered in the shadow of General Worth's monument.Now and then, shyly, ostentatiously, carelessly, or with conscientious exactness one would step forward and bestow upon the Preacher small bills or silver.Then a lieutenant of Scandinavian coloring and enthusiasm would march away to a lodging house with a squad of the redeemed.All the while the Preacher exhorted the crowd in terms beautifully devoid of eloquence--splendid with the deadly, accusative monotony of truth.Before the picture of the Bed Liners fades you must hear one phrase of the Preacher's--the one that formed his theme that night.It is worthy of being stenciled on all the white ribbons in the world.

_"No man ever learned to be a drunkard on five-cent whisky."_Think of it, tippler.It covers the ground from the sprouting rye to the Potter's Field.

A clean-profiled, erect young man in the rear rank of the bedless emulated the terrapin, drawing his head far down into the shell of his coat collar.It was a well-cut tweed coat; and the trousers still showed signs of having flattened themselves beneath the compelling goose.But, conscientiously, I must warn the milliner's apprentice who reads this, expecting a Reginald Montressor in straits, to peruse no further.The young man was no other than Thomas McQuade, ex-coachman, discharged for drunkenness one month before, and now reduced to the grimy ranks of the one-night bed seekers.

If you live in smaller New York you must know the Van Smuythe family carriage, drawn by the two 1,500-pound, 100 to 1-shot bays.The carriage is shaped like a bath-tub.In each end of it reclines an old lady Van Smuythe holding a black sunshade the size of a New Year's Eve feather tickler.Before his downfall Thomas McQuade drove the Van Smuythe bays and was himself driven by Annie, the Van Smuythe lady's maid.But it is one of the saddest things about romance that a tight shoe or an empty commissary or an aching tooth will make a temporary heretic of any Cupid-worshiper.And Thomas's physical troubles were not few.Therefore, his soul was less vexed with thoughts of his lost lady's maid than it was by the fancied presence of certain non-existent things that his racked nerves almost convinced him were flying, dancing, crawling, and wriggling on the asphalt and in the air above and around the dismal campus of the Bed Line army.

Nearly four weeks of straight whisky and a diet limited to crackers, bologna, and pickles often guarantees a psycho-zoological sequel.Thus desperate, freezing, angry, beset by phantoms as he was, he felt the need of human sympathy and intercourse.

The Bed Liner standing at his right was a young man of about his own age, shabby but neat.

"What's the diagnosis of your case, Freddy?" asked Thomas, with the freemasonic familiarity of the damned--"Booze? That's mine.

You don't look like a panhandler.Neither am I.A month ago Iwas pushing the lines over the backs of the finest team of Percheron buffaloes that ever made their mile down Fifth Avenue in 2.85.And look at me now! Say; how do you come to be at this bed bargain-counter rummage sale."The other young man seemed to welcome the advances of the airy ex-coachman.

"No," said he, "mine isn't exactly a case of drink.Unless we allow that Cupid is a bartender.I married unwisely, according to the opinion of my unforgiving relatives.I've been out of work for a year because I don't know how to work; and I've been sick in Bellevue and other hospitals for months.My wife and kid had to go back to her mother.I was turned out of the hospital yesterday.

And I haven't a cent.That's my tale of woe.""Tough luck," said Thomas."A man alone can pull through all right.But I hate to see the women and kids get the worst of it."Just then there hummed up Fifth Avenue a motor car so splendid, so red, so smoothly running, so craftily demolishing the speed regulations that it drew the attention even of the listless Bed Liners.Suspended and pinioned on its left side was an extra tire.

When opposite the unfortunate company the fastenings of this tire became loosed.It fell to the asphalt, bounded and rolled rapidly in the wake of the flying car.