Ben chose a bench and sat down.  A listlessness was upon him that the ozone of the prairies had never let him feel.  He felt cramped for room, as though, should he draw as full a breath as he wished, it would exhaust the supply.  A big freshly-shaven policeman strolled by, eying him suspiciously.  It gave the young man the impression of being a prisoner out on good behavior; and in an indefinite way it almost insulted his self-respect.  For the lack of something better to do he watched the minion of the law as he pursued his beat.  Not Ben Blair alone, but every person the officer passed, went through this challenging inspection.  The countryman had been too much preoccupied to notice that he had companions; but now that his interest was aroused, he began inspecting the occupants of the other benches.  The person nearest him was a little old man in a crumpled linen suit.  Most of the time his nose was close to his morning paper; but now and then he raised his face and looked away with an absent expression in his faded near-sighted eyes.  Was he enjoying his present life?  Ben would have taken his oath to the contrary.  Again there flashed over him the impression of a prison with this fellow-being in confinement.  There was indescribable pathos in that dull retrospective gaze, and Ben looked away.  In the land from which he came there could not be found such an example of hopeless and useless age.  There the aged had occupation,—­the care of their children’s children, a garden, an interest in crops and growing things, a fame as prophets of weather,—­but such apathy as this, never.

A bit farther away was another type, also a man, badly dressed and unshaven.  His battered felt hat was drawn low over the upper half of his face, and he was stretched flat upon the narrow bench.  He was far too long for his bed, and to accommodate his superfluous length his knees were bent up like a jack-knife.  Carrying with them the baggy trousers,—­he wore no underclothes,—­they left a hairy expanse between their ends and the yellow, rusty shoes.  His chest rose and fell in the motion of sleep.

Ben Blair had seen many a human derelict on the frontier; the country was full of them,—­adventurers, searchers after lost health—­popularly denominated “one-lungers”—­soldiers of fortune; but he had never known such a class as this man represented,—­useless cumberers of the earth, wanderers by day, sleepers on the benches of public parks by night.  Had he been a student of sociology he might have found a certain morbid interest in the spectacle; but it was merely depressing to him; it destroyed what pleasure he might otherwise have taken in the place.  This man was but a step beneath those dull toilers he had seen on the cars.  They had not yet given up the struggle against the inevitable, or were too stolid to rebel; while he—­