“It’s a cold night!” I began.  “Are you out of a job?”

With his wistful eye he gave me a kind glance.

“I’ve been sick.  There’s a sharp pain right in through here.”  He showed me a spot under his arm.  “They thought at the hospital that I ’ad consumption.  But,” his face brightened, “I haven’t got it.”  He showed in his smile the life-warrant that kept him from suicide. He wanted to live.

“Where did you sleep last night?” I asked.  “It was a cold night.”

“To tell you the truth,” he responded in his strong Scotch accent, “I slept in a wagon.”

I proposed that we do some shopping together; he looked at me gratefully and limped along to a cheap clothing store, kept by an Italian.  The warmth within was agreeable; there was a display of garments hung across the ceiling under the gas-light.  My companion waited, leaning against the glass counter, while I priced the flannel shirts.  To be sure, my own costume promised little bounty.  The price of the shirt was seventy-five cents, and as soon as he heard this the poor man said: 

“Oh, you mustn’t spend as much as that.”

Looking first at the pauper, then at me, the Italian leaned over and whispered to me, “I think I understand.  You can have the shirt for sixty, and I’ll put in a pair of socks, too.”

Thus we had become a fraternity; all were poor, the stronger woe helping the weaker....  When his toilet was complete the poor man looked half a head taller.

“Shall I wrap up your old cap for you?” the salesman asked, and the other laughed a broken, long-disused laugh.

“I guess I won’t need it any more,” he said, turning to me.

His face had changed like the children’s valentines that grow at a touch from a blank card to a glimpse of paradise.

Once in the street again we shook hands.  I was going back to my supper.  He was going, the charity directors would say, to pawn his shirt and coat.

The man had evidently not more than a few months to live; I was leaving Chicago the following day.  We would undoubtedly never meet again.

As his bony hand lay in mine, his eyes looked straight at me.  “Thank you,” he said, and his last words were these: 

“I’ll stand by you.”

It was a pledge of fraternity at parting.  There was no material substance to promise.  I took it to mean that he would stand by any generous impulses I might have; that he would be, as it were, a patron of spontaneous as opposed to organized charity; a patron of those who are never too poor to give to some one poorer; of those who have no scientific reasons for giving, no statistics, only compassion and pity; of those who want to aid not only the promising but the hopeless cases; of those whose charity is tolerant and maternal, patient with the helpless, prepared for disappointments; not looking for results, ever ready to begin again, so long as the paradox of suffering and inability are linked together in humanity.