In the infirmaries and hospitals the nurses and genial-faced Sisters of Mercy bend over the beds of sufferers all through the dreary night, and bring to many an aching heart, as well as to pain-racked bodies, consolation and solace. The doctors, too, see much of the seamy side of night life. They are out by day and by night; the telephone rouses them from warm beds at all hours; whenever a knife flashes in a brawl, the doctor must be sent for; if a lady feels a nervous fluttering at the heart, out must come the carriage, and he must be sent for to feel her pulse in the middle of the night. Often he watches at the bedside of some stricken wife or child, while the husband is away roistering in evil company. * * * * * On a dry goods box sits a tramp, gently swinging his feet. It is 2 o'clock in the morning, and there he sits chewing a splinter with a frequent side glance toward the policeman on the next corner. What is he doing there? Nothing. Has he any hopes, fears, dislikes, ambitions, hates, loves or desires? Very few. It may be that his is the true philosophy. John Davidson says of him in a poem: I hang about the streets all day, At night I hang about; I sleep a little when I may, But rise, betimes, the morning's scout, For through the year I always hear Aloud, aloft, a ghostly shout. My clothes are worn to threads and loops, My skin shows here and there; About my face, like seaweed, droops My tangled beard, my tangled hair, From cavernous and shaggy brows My stony eyes untroubled stare. I know no handicraft, no art, But I have conquered fate; For I have chosen the better part, And neither hope, nor fear, nor hate; With placid breath, on pain and death, My certain alms, alone I wait. And daily, nightly comes the call, The pale unechoing note, The faint "Aha" sent from the wall Of Heaven, but from no ruddy throat Of human breed or seraph's seed, A phantom voice that cries by rote. This is a state closely bordering upon Nirvana. Tennyson struck another chord that sooner or later most people come to feel, when he said: "For, not to desire or admire, If a man could learn it, were more Than to walk all day like a sultan Of old in a garden of spice." The tramp sits out the weary hours of the night or else wanders in dreary aimlessness about the streets, or crawls into some vestibule or doorway for a few brief hours of unquiet slumber. His is a pitiful solution of life at its best, for, though he has acquired a numbness in place of what was once a keen pain, it is directly contrary to the plan of the human mind to await in hopeless stolidity the "certain alms" of death. * * * * *