He came to me with the card of one of our nurses, a lanky, slipshod sort of fellow of nineteen or thereabouts. The nurse had run across him begging in a tenement. When she asked him why he did that, he put a question himself: "Where would a fellow beg if not among the poor?" And now there he stood, indifferent, bored if anything, shiftless, yet with some indefinite appeal, waiting to see what I would do. She had told him that he had better go and see me, and he had come. He had done his part; it was up to me now. He was a waiter, he said, used to working South in the winter, but it was then too late. He had been ill. He suppressed a little hacking cough that told its own story; he was a "lunger." Did he tramp? Yes, he said, and I noticed that his breath smelled of whisky. He made no attempt to hide the fact. I explained to him that I might send him to some place in the country where he could get better during the winter, but that it would be so much effort wasted if he drank. He considered a while, and nodded in his curious detached way; he guessed he could manage without it, if he had plenty of hot coffee. The upshot of it was that he accepted my condition and went. [Illustration: "THERE HE STOOD, INDIFFERENT, BORED IF ANYTHING, SHIFTLESS."] Along in midwinter our door-bell was rung one night, and there stood Peter. "Oh! did you come back? Too bad!" It slipped out before I had time to think. But Peter bore with me. He smiled reassurance. "I did not run away. The place burned down; we were sent back." It was true; I remembered. But the taint of whisky was on his breath. "You have been drinking again," I fretted. "You spent your money for that--" "No," said he; "a man treated me." "And did you have to take whisky?" There was no trace of resentment in his retort: "Well, now, what would he have said if I'd took milk?" It was as one humoring a child. He went South on a waiter job. From St. Augustine he sent me a letter that ended: "Write me in care of the post-office; it is the custom of the town to get your letters there." Likely it was the first time in his life that he had had a mail address. "This is a very nice place," ran his comment on the old Spanish town, "but for business give me New York." The _Wanderlust_ gripped Peter, and I heard from him next in the Southwest. For years letters came from him at long intervals, showing that he had not forgotten me. Once another tramp called on me with greeting from him and a request for shoes. When "business" next took Peter to New York and he called, I told him that I valued his acquaintance, but did not care for that of many more tramps. He knew the man at once.