and his father, leaving Jasper to trip whatever fantastic toes he might have, in the opera house, drove down the hill through the glare of the furnaces, the creaking of the oil derricks and the smell of the straw paper mill through the heart of South Harvey. They made little talk as they rode. Their way led them through the street which is shaded and ashamed by day, and which glows and flaunts itself by night. Men and women, gambling, drinking, carousing, rioted through the street, in and out of doors that spilled puddles of yellow light on the board sidewalks and dirt streets; screaming laughter, hoarse calls, the stench of liquor, the muffled noises of gambling, sputter of electric lights and the flash of glimmering reflections from bar mirrors rasped their senses and kept the father and son silent as they rode. When they had passed into the slumbering tenements, the father spoke: "Well, son, here it is--the two kinds of playing, and here we have what they call the bad people playing. The Van Dorns and the Satterthwaites will tell you that vice is the recreation of the poor. And it's more or less true." The elder man scratched his beard and faced the stars: "It's a devilish puzzle. Character makes happiness; I've got that down fine. But what makes character? Why is vice the recreation of the poor? Why do we recruit most of our bad boys and all of our wayward girls from those neighborhoods in every city where the poor live? Why does the clerk on $12 a week uptown crowd into Doctor Jim's wedding party, and the glass blower at $4 a day down here crowd into 'Big Em's' and 'Joe's Place' and the 'Crescent'? Is poverty caused by vice; or is vice a symptom of poverty? And why does the clerk's wife move in 'our best circles' and the miner's wife, with exactly the same money to spend, live in outer social darkness?" "I've asked myself that question lots of times," exclaimed the youth. "I can't make it work out on any theory. But I tell you, father," the son clinched the hand that was free from the lines, and shook it, "it's wrong--some way, somehow, it's wrong, way down at the bottom of things--I don't know how nor why--but as sure as I live, I'll try to find out." The clang of an engine bell in the South Harvey railroad yards drowned the son's answer. The two were crossing the track and turning the corner that led to the South Harvey station. The midnight train was about due. As the buggy came near the little gray box of a station a voice called, "Adams--Adams," and a woman's voice, "Oh, Grant."