hope to tide himself over by odd jobs of loading trucks; he could not even sell newspapers or carry satchels, because he was now at the mercy of any rival.  Words could not paint the terror that came over him as he realized all this.  He was like a wounded animal in the forest; he was forced to compete with his enemies upon unequal terms.  There would be no consideration for him because of his weakness—­it was no one’s business to help him in such distress, to make the fight the least bit easier for him.  Even if he took to begging, he would be at a disadvantage, for reasons which he was to discover in good time.

In the beginning he could not think of anything except getting out of the awful cold.  He went into one of the saloons he had been wont to frequent and bought a drink, and then stood by the fire shivering and waiting to be ordered out.  According to an unwritten law, the buying a drink included the privilege of loafing for just so long; then one had to buy another drink or move on.  That Jurgis was an old customer entitled him to a somewhat longer stop; but then he had been away two weeks, and was evidently “on the bum.”  He might plead and tell his “hard luck story,” but that would not help him much; a saloon-keeper who was to be moved by such means would soon have his place jammed to the doors with “hoboes” on a day like this.

So Jurgis went out into another place, and paid another nickel.  He was so hungry this time that he could not resist the hot beef stew, an indulgence which cut short his stay by a considerable time.  When he was again told to move on, he made his way to a “tough” place in the “Levee” district, where now and then he had gone with a certain rat-eyed Bohemian workingman of his acquaintance, seeking a woman.  It was Jurgis’s vain hope that here the proprietor would let him remain as a “sitter.”  In low-class places, in the dead of winter, saloon-keepers would often allow one or two forlorn-looking bums who came in covered with snow or soaked with rain to sit by the fire and look miserable to attract custom.  A workingman would come in, feeling cheerful after his day’s work was over, and it would trouble him to have to take his glass with such a sight under his nose; and so he would call out:  “Hello, Bub, what’s the matter?  You look as if you’d been up against it!” And then the other would begin to pour out some tale of misery, and the man would say, “Come have a glass, and maybe that’ll brace you up.”  And so they would drink together, and if the tramp was sufficiently wretched-looking, or good enough at the “gab,” they might have two; and if they were to discover that they were from the same country, or had lived in the same city or worked at the same trade, they might sit down at a table and spend an hour or two in talk—­and before they got through the saloon-keeper would have taken in a dollar.  All of this might seem diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it.  He was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and misrepresent his product.  If he does not, some one else will; and the saloon-keeper, unless he is also an alderman, is apt to be in debt to the big brewers, and on the verge of being sold out.