About fifteen years ago I was appointed spiritual adviser to the Diocese of the Bowery and Chatham Square. This strange whirlpool of humanity presents a problem of more than ordinary proportions to the policeman or the missionary. The Bowery is a mile of American life in which the nations of the earth meet for excitement and change. There is a business aspect of it which is permanent, but the many-colored throng surging up and down its side-walks all day and all night is ephemeral. It is the place for the homeless, for the out of kilter, for the rudderless wrecks who drift. Its fifty or more lodging-houses are filled with men whose only home is the six-by-ten room in which they sleep. A block from Chatham Square I found a resort which I at once made a base of operations for my campaign. It was a bunk-house, a big five-story rear tenement at No. 9 Mulberry Street. The entrance to it was a slit in the front block--a long, deep, narrow alley, then, as now, indescribably filthy. Over the iron gate at the entrance was the name of the house and the price of some of the beds. "Bismarck" was the name; the lodgers used to call it "Hotel de Bismarck." The lower floors were filled with ten- and twelve-cent bed-cots; the upper floors were bunk dormitories. A bunk is a strip of canvas. For seven cents a night the lodger gained admission to the dormitory. Once there, he might stretch himself on the bunk, or he might take advantage of the floor. Of the three hundred guests, more than half were accommodated on canvas or on the floor. The covering on the ten-cent bed was changed once a month; if a man wanted toilet accommodations, he paid for them elsewhere. The Bismarck never had a bath, nor a wash-basin. A ten- or twelve-cent guest had a wardrobe; it was seldom used, but it was there. At the head of each cot stood this tall, narrow receptacle for the clothing and valuables of the guests, but in the old days wise guests slept in their clothes. I have known of unsuspecting wayfarers who deposited their belongings in the wardrobe, locked it, and hid the key under the pillow, and next morning had to wrap themselves in newspapers or in a borrowed sheet until they could reach a junk-store. The key was safe, but the wardrobe and contents had disappeared. On the second floor was the sitting-room. There was a stove for winter months, and against the wall on four sides of the room were built benches. There was but one chair in the room; that was the clerk's. The walls were whitewashed; the windows were covered most of the time with cobwebs and dirt, and the floor was littered with rubbish. The clerk was a quiet man by the name of Allen. He had a bouncer named McBriarty--his nickname was "Gar." The bouncer had an understudy who was called Frank--"Big Frank." The house was owned at that time by a banker named Barsotti. _The Gathering of the Men who Were_