I do not like cynics. I like Jim better. I like Jim and his burning eyes, his skinny hands, his dying body--and his store. Fighting--with the lights going out. Sitting in a wheel chair with death at his back and despair crying from his eyes--"Come buy from me--a little while longer--I don't give up ... another week ... another month ... but I don't give up. I'm still on the turf.... Never mind my dying body ... business as usual ... business as usual.... Come buy from me ... little while longer ... a...." But I never gave a nickel to Jim. I passed up his store. I took him at his word. He was selling wares and I didn't want any. But my beggar with the one leg and the inward grin was selling absolutions.... And I patronized him. THE MAN WITH A QUESTION Late afternoon. An hour more and the city will be emptying itself out of the high buildings. Now the shoppers are hurrying home to get dinner on the table. A man stands on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street. Unwittingly he invites attention. A poorly dressed man, with a work-heavy face and coarsened hands. But he stands motionless. More than that, he is not looking at anything. His deep-set eyes seem to withhold themselves from the active street. In the sauve spectacle of the avenue his motionless figure is like an awkward faux pas in a parlor conversation. The newspaper man on his way to the I. C. station pauses to light his pipe and his eyes take in the figure of this motionless one. The newspaper man notices that the man stands like one who is braced against something that may come suddenly and that his deep-set eyes say, "We know what we know." There are other impressions that interest the newspaper man. For a moment the motionless one seems a blurred little unit of the hurrying crowd. Then for a moment he seems to grow large and his figure becomes commanding and it is as if he were surveying the blurred little faces of the hurrying crowd. This is undoubtedly because he is standing still and not looking at anything. * * * * * "Can I have a light, please?" The man's voice is low. A bit hoarse. He has a pipe and the newspaper man gives him a match. Ah, the amiable, meaningless curiosity of newspaper men! This one must ask questions. It is after work, but, like the policeman who goes to the movies with his club still at his side, he is still asking questions. "Taking in the sights?" The man, lighting his pipe, nods slowly. Much too slowly, as if his answer were fraught with a vast significance. "I like it myself," insinuates the newspaper man. "I was reading Junius Wood's article on Bill Shatov, who is running things now in Siberia. He quotes Bill as saying what he misses most in life now is the music of crowds in Chicago streets. Did you read that?" This is a brazen lead. But the man looks like a "red." And Bill Shatov would then open the talk. But the man only shakes his head. He says, "No, I don't read the papers much."