He raised his head and looked at me, and said, "I'll show you a place." Leaning his shovel against the kiln, and picking up his lantern, he said, "Come with me." He paused at a kiln. "Some of the boys are sleeping in here to-night." I followed as he entered the low, narrow opening of a kiln and raised his light. We were in a round oven or kiln about forty feet in circumference. By the light of his lifted lantern I counted _thirty men_. "There are about seventy sleeping in the empty kilns to-night; I think you will find a place to lie down there," he said, as he pointed to a place between two men. I at once lay down, and with a "Good-night" he left me to the darkness and to the company of those homeless sleepers, who, in all our great city, could find no other refuge from death. The kiln was so desperately hot that I could not sleep, and habit had not inured me to that kind of bed. Had I been half-starved, weak, and exhausted, as were most of my companions, I, too, could have slept, and perhaps would have wanted to sleep on forever. No one spoke to me. I endured the night by going at intervals to the kiln's opening for fresh air. It was then when I looked up into the deep, dark, frozen sky, that I thought what a vast difference there is in being a destitute man from choice and a destitute man from necessity. At four o'clock the time for a fresh firing of the kilns, we were driven from the great heat of that place out into the bitter cold of the winter morning. Very few of the men had any kind of extra coat, but, thinly clad as they were, they must walk the streets until six o'clock, waiting for the saloons or some other public places to be opened. Their suffering was pitiful. I afterward learned that many of these men, from this exposure, contracted pneumonia, and from this and many other exposures filled to overflowing the hospitals of the city. During the entire week I followed up my investigations. I found men sleeping in almost unthinkable places; in the sand-houses and the round-houses of the railroad companies, when they had touched the heart of the watchman. I asked one of the railway men why the companies drove them away from this bit of comfort and shelter. "Because they steal," was his reply. "What do they steal?" I asked. "Oh, the supper pail of the man who comes to work all night, an old sack worth a nickel, a piece of brass or iron, or part of the equipment from a Pullman car, or anything they can sell for enough to buy a meal, or a bed, or a drink." "Do they steal those little things because they are hungry?" I questioned. "Oh, I don't know," he said with a shrug. "They are often so successful in not being detected, I expect that has made them bold. Some may have been hungry," he said, after a thoughtful pause. "Work has been scarce and hard to find, you know."