“Not this eve—­some other eve!”

A drunken man, reeling in her pathway, began to roar at her.  “I ain’ ga no money, dammit,” he shouted, in a dismal voice.  He lurched on up the street, wailing to himself, “Dammit, I ain’ ga no money.  Damn ba’ luck.  Ain’ ga no more money.”

The girl went into gloomy districts near the river, where the tall black factories shut in the street and only occasional broad beams of light fell across the pavements from saloons.  In front of one of these places, from whence came the sound of a violin vigorously scraped, the patter of feet on boards and the ring of loud laughter, there stood a man with blotched features.

“Ah, there,” said the girl.

“I’ve got a date,” said the man.

Further on in the darkness she met a ragged being with shifting, blood-shot eyes and grimey hands.  “Ah, what deh hell?  Tink I’m a millionaire?”

She went into the blackness of the final block.  The shutters of the tall buildings were closed like grim lips.  The structures seemed to have eyes that looked over her, beyond her, at other things.  Afar off the lights of the avenues glittered as if from an impossible distance.  Street car bells jingled with a sound of merriment.

When almost to the river the girl saw a great figure.  On going forward she perceived it to be a huge fat man in torn and greasy garments.  His gray hair straggled down over his forehead.  His small, bleared eyes, sparkling from amidst great rolls of red fat, swept eagerly over the girl’s upturned face.  He laughed, his brown, disordered teeth gleaming under a gray, grizzled moustache from which beer-drops dripped.  His whole body gently quivered and shook like that of a dead jelly fish.  Chuckling and leering, he followed the girl of the crimson legions.

At their feet the river appeared a deathly black hue.  Some hidden factory sent up a yellow glare, that lit for a moment the waters lapping oilily against timbers.  The varied sounds of life, made joyous by distance and seeming unapproachableness, came faintly and died away to silence.

In a partitioned-off section of a saloon sat a man with a half dozen women, gleefully laughing, hovering about him.  The man had arrived at that stage of drunkenness where affection is felt for the universe.

“I’m good f’ler, girls,” he said, convincingly.  “I’m damn good f’ler.  An’body treats me right, I allus trea’s zem right!  See?”

The women nodded their heads approvingly.  “To be sure,” they cried out in hearty chorus.  “You’re the kind of a man we like, Pete.  You’re outa sight!  What yeh goin’ to buy this time, dear?”

“An’t’ing yehs wants, damn it,” said the man in an abandonment of good will.  His countenance shone with the true spirit of benevolence.  He was in the proper mode of missionaries.  He would have fraternized with obscure Hottentots.  And above all, he was overwhelmed in tenderness for his friends, who were all illustrious.