By this time it was midnight. From down in the lower part of the city I saw a man standing listlessly on the curbing. In a moment he sat down. I strolled along and sat down beside him. He was penniless, starving, had eaten nothing since morning, and had no place to rest, but he was not hopeless. In fact, he was in a rather happy mood, for he had a place to work ten miles out in the country, on a farm for one dollar and a half a day and board, and if he made good it would be an all winter job. Soon after daybreak he was going to start out. When I told him I, too, was without a place to sleep, he told me I was welcome to his blankets which he had down in an old shed under the tracks where the owner had let him spread them down the night before. He doubted, however, whether I could stand it. "I tried it last night, but if there was one I believe there were ten thousand rats infesting the place. I was fearful of losing myself for one minute for fear they might attack me, and so I spent the night just as I am spending this one. The farmer did not want me to come out until Monday morning, although I wanted to go out Saturday with him when he hired me." Thoroughly tired out, I bade my hopeful midnight acquaintance good-night, and sought my hotel. As I lay in my comfortable bed I thought of the homeless, moneyless ones who belonged to Omaha that night and who were shelterless and hungry. The next day I visited the City Jail. There I found eight ten-by-ten cells, the bull-pens. Crowded into a single one of these, I counted fourteen men. The shocking closeness of the place was stifling, and I hurried out. I saw, far up the street, a great mob pressing down, and as soon as I got within hearing and seeing distance, I made out two men driving a team of horses hitched to an old wagon partly filled with potatoes. The men were driving directly down the car track, hindering the traffic of the cars. Two policemen stood back of these men trying to get hold of the lines, and they were beating them or trying to beat them into insensibility. The men's shirts were torn into shreds and the blood ran down over their faces and over their clothes to the bottom of the wagon. I did not find what the trouble was about, but it was as though I had caught a leaf from those other days of social unrest, when the poor of France cried for bread, and the thoughtless paid so dearly for their folly. There was no place for a homeless man in Omaha that night--not even in the city jail. A strike was on. CHAPTER XIII SAN FRANCISCO--THE MISSION, THE PRISON, AND THE HOMELESS "_Liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound._"--ISAIAH 61:1.