Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Didactic fiction; Mistresses -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"Would you mind giving me a little something?" he asked this man boldly.
The gentleman looked him over and fished for a dime. Nothing but
quarters were in his pocket.
"Here," he said, handing him one, to be rid of him. "Be off, now."
Hurstwood moved on, wondering. The sight of the large, bright coin
pleased him a little. He remembered that he was hungry and that he could
get a bed for ten cents. With this, the idea of death passed, for the
time being, out of his mind. It was only when he could get nothing but
insults that death seemed worth while.
One day, in the middle of the winter, the sharpest spell of the season
set in. It broke grey and cold in the first day, and on the second
snowed. Poor luck pursuing him, he had secured but ten cents by
nightfall, and this he had spent for food. At evening he found himself
at the Boulevard and Sixty-seventh Street, where he finally turned his
face Bowery-ward. Especially fatigued because of the wandering
propensity which had seized him in the morning, he now half dragged his
wet feet, shuffling the soles upon the sidewalk. An old, thin coat was
turned up about his red ears--his cracked derby hat was pulled down
until it turned them outward. His hands were in his pockets.
"I'll just go down Broadway," he said to himself.
When he reached Forty-second Street, the fire signs were already
blazing brightly. Crowds were hastening to dine. Through bright windows,
at every corner, might be seen gay companies in luxuriant restaurants.
There were coaches and crowded cable cars.
In his weary and hungry state, he should never have come here. The
contrast was too sharp. Even he was recalled keenly to better things.
"What's the use?" he thought. "It's all up with me. I'll quit this."
People turned to look after him, so uncouth was his shambling figure.
Several officers followed him with their eyes, to see that he did not
beg of anybody.
Once he paused in an aimless, incoherent sort of way and looked through
the windows of an imposing restaurant, before which blazed a fire sign,
and through the large, plate windows of which could be seen the red and
gold decorations, the palms, the white napery, and shining glassware,
and, above all, the comfortable crowd. Weak as his mind had become, his
hunger was sharp enough to show the importance of this. He stopped stock
still, his frayed trousers soaking in the slush, and peered foolishly
in.
"Eat," he mumbled. "That's right, eat. Nobody else wants any."
Then his voice dropped even lower, and his mind half lost the fancy it
had.
"It's mighty cold," he said. "Awful cold."
At Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street was blazing, in incandescent fire,
Carrie's name. "Carrie Madenda," it read, "and the Casino Company." All
the wet, snowy sidewalk was bright with this radiated fire. It was so
bright that it attracted Hurstwood's gaze. He looked up, and then at a
large, gilt-framed poster-board, on which was a fine lithograph of
Carrie, life-size.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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