empty queens-ware hogshead,—­and employed himself till night trying to make up his mind what to buy with it.  But it was hard to do.  To get the most for it was the idea.  He knew that at the Miner’s Restaurant he could get a plate of beans and a piece of bread for ten cents; or a fish-ball and some few trifles, but they gave “no bread with one fish-ball” there.  At French Pete’s he could get a veal cutlet, plain, and some radishes and bread, for ten cents; or a cup of coffee—­a pint at least—­and a slice of bread; but the slice was not thick enough by the eighth of an inch, and sometimes they were still more criminal than that in the cutting of it.  At seven o’clock his hunger was wolfish; and still his mind was not made up.  He turned out and went up Merchant street, still ciphering; and chewing a bit of stick, as is the way of starving men.

He passed before the lights of Martin’s restaurant, the most aristocratic in the city, and stopped.  It was a place where he had often dined, in better days, and Martin knew him well.  Standing aside, just out of the range of the light, he worshiped the quails and steaks in the show window, and imagined that may be the fairy times were not gone yet and some prince in disguise would come along presently and tell him to go in there and take whatever he wanted.  He chewed his stick with a hungry interest as he warmed to his subject.  Just at this juncture he was conscious of some one at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touched his arm.  He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition—­a very allegory of Hunger!  It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded piteously.  This phantom said: 

“Come with me—­please.”

He locked his arm in Blucher’s and walked up the street to where the passengers were few and the light not strong, and then facing about, put out his hands in a beseeching way, and said: 

“Friend—­stranger—­look at me!  Life is easy to you—­you go about, placid and content, as I did once, in my day—­you have been in there, and eaten your sumptuous supper, and picked your teeth, and hummed your tune, and thought your pleasant thoughts, and said to yourself it is a good world —­but you’ve never suffered!  You don’t know what trouble is—­you don’t know what misery is—­nor hunger!  Look at me!  Stranger have pity on a poor friendless, homeless dog!  As God is my judge, I have not tasted food for eight and forty hours!—­look in my eyes and see if I lie!  Give me the least trifle in the world to keep me from starving—­anything —­twenty-five cents!  Do it, stranger—­do it, please.  It will be nothing to you, but life to me.  Do it, and I will go down on my knees and lick the dust before you!  I will kiss your footprints—­I will worship the very ground you walk on!  Only twenty-five cents!  I am famishing —­perishing—­starving by inches!  For God’s sake don’t desert me!”