I had known this man as a brilliant orator, a religious leader, the champion of a sect. In a city across the sea I had sat as a bare-legged boy on an upturned barrel, part of an immense crowd, listening to the flow of his oratory. Next day he left the bunk-house. Some weeks afterward I found him on a curbstone, preaching to whoever of the pedestrians would listen. At the close of his address I introduced myself again. He took me to his new lodging, and I put the questions that filled my mind. For answer, he gave me the House of Commons Blue Book, which explained the charge hanging over him. Almost daily, for weeks, I heard him on his knees proclaim his innocence of the unmentionable crime with which he was charged. After some weeks of daily association, he said to me: "I believe you are sent of God to guide me, and I am prepared to take your advice." My advice was ready. He turned pale as I told him to pack his trunk and take the next ship for England. "Face the storm like a man!" I urged, and he said: "It will kill me, but I will do it." He did it, and it swept him to prison, to shame, and to oblivion. _A St. Francis of the Bunk-house_ One Sunday afternoon I was going through the dormitories, calling the lodgers to prayer. On one of the ten-cent cots an old white-haired man was reading a life of Buffalo Bill. His face was marred by a scar over one of the eyes. He spoke gently and with a pronounced Irish accent. [Illustration: "ONE NIGHT THE GRAF WAS PREVAILED UPON TO TELL HIS STORY"] "I am an Episcopalian," he said, when I invited him below to the meeting. "We have all denominations," I assured him. Everybody in the bunk-house had a connection, more or less remote, with some sect. "Say," said the bouncer, concerning the old man, "dat ol' duffer's got de angel goods on him O.K." [Illustration: THE SITTING-ROOM OF THE BISMARCK] His name was Edward Dowling. He was a gentleman. He had soldiered under Sir Colin Campbell and Sir Henry Havelock in India. Later he owned a ranch in the West. Then an accident deprived him of the use of an eye, and he spent all he had in trying to preserve his sight. Homeless and penniless on the streets of New York, he had learned to do tinkering and the mending of umbrellas. In his poverty he drifted to the bunk-house. The following Sunday, at our meeting, he had an awakening which reminded me of the account of Paul's conversion on the way to Damascus. It revolutionized his mental processes, and he began to give outward expression to his new-found inner joy. He would buy some stale bread overnight, and early in the morning he would make coffee on the bunk-house stove in a quart tomato-can. Each man, before he left the place, had a bite of stale bread and at least a mouthful of warm coffee. Then they would uncover their heads while the old man asked God to bless them for the day.