"Leave that to me." "That's a blind sort of an invitation, doctor. But, of course, I will go anywhere you want me to. But what is it? Some holy Sorosis? That reformed theater you talk about? Any charge for admittance, or collection? Of course, going with a distinguished clergyman I shall have to appear in swallow-tails and arctic shirt-front." "Not a bit of it, Phil; your oldest clothes, so that you will look just as mean as you say you feel; then, for once, you can't accuse yourself of being a hypocrite." There was a motley crowd in the front room of a Bowery twenty-cent lodging-house. The room was the parlor, but the occupants called it the "deck," in distinction from the rest of the house, which was filled with bunks. There were hard old soakers in a periodical state of repentance; or, to speak more scientifically, in that state of gland-moistening that comes after a certain amount of poor beer has permeated the system. There were young prodigals, in there for the night because they had no money for a night's carousal elsewhere. There was a sprinkling of honest men, thankful for even this refuge from the sleety streets. There were some two hundred pieces of the great human wreck made by the hard times, which were beached in Brady's Harbor, as the place was called. The usual hubbub had calmed while a story-teller, who sat on the edge of a table, and whose slouch-hat and high ulster collar did not altogether conceal the genial face of Dr. Knox, entertained the crowd with old army yarns, which, as usual with such literature, were taken largely from the apocryphal portion of our national annals. "Bully for you! Give us another!" was the encore, emphasized with the rattle of backgammon-boards and boot-heels. "Haven't any more; but I have a friend here who will bring up the reserves in the way of a song." "Song, song! Rosin your larynx, old boy!" greeted the suggestion, while the crowd gathered closer about Vox, and several who had "turned in" for the night turned out of their bunks again, minus coats and boots. A friendly slap on the back by something less than a ten-pound hand helped the singer to clear his throat. Vox gave them "O'Grady's Goat" and one or two other classics of the Tenderloin district, with the rapt appreciation of his audience. Tom Moore's "Minstrel Boy," to the genuine old Irish melody, struck the heroic chord in the breasts of men most of whom were deserters from the real battle-fields of life. Then Vox dropped into a lullaby. The tender mother words given in his masculine tones seemed a burlesque as he began; but the deep bass took on the softness and sweetness of a contralto, and made one think, if not of a mother cooing to her baby, at least of some rough, great-hearted man who had found a lost child and was rocking it to sleep in his strong arms. More than one greasy sleeve got into its owner's eyes before Vox ended.