"Watchin' it swim, eh, was he? A'right. Whose dog is it?" The officer turned and sauntered away. Sudden horror seized the old man. The liquor seemed drained out of his veins: his brain worked almost quickly. "Whose dog--whose dog? Say!" he darted after the retreating boys. "Say--that ain't no dog--is it--no _dog_? Tied up like that to drown--say--" "Aw--keep off--I told you onct--it's a turtle for the Lodge dinner." The boy shook himself free. The old man stood a moment, shaken. His pulpy brain worked dimly toward the conception of the pain that was consuming him. "Whose dog--" that man had asked--and he hadn't meant to help it--"whose dog!" They could do it--tie up a dog to drown in sight of people--like that--cruel. He saw the policeman coming toward him again. In a sudden frenzy he clutched his tattered garments about him and began to run, to run toward the end of the pier. The boys raced after him. "What yer gonter do?" they shouted. "What yer gonter do?" The old man turned and looked at them a moment with twitching features. "I'm gonter die," he said. "Come on, you fellers--come on--the drunk's gonter dive--come on--he's cryin'!" There was a splash. A surge of green filth and mud spread and dyed the water. A row of expectant heads leaned over the rail. "Say--he ain't come up." They waited. The policeman strolled leisurely down in response to their repeated cries. "_Who_ ain't come up? What, him--the drunk?" The officer leaned lethargically over the rail. "What'm I gonter do? Why, leave 'm. He ain't got no folks gonter sit up nights waitin' fer 'm. Now you young ones go along home to your suppers," he indulgently commanded, "and you little fellers, if you want crabs, be 'round here early. By to-morrow this place will be fairly swarmin' with them." LIFE[7] BY BEN HECHT From _The Little Review_ [7] Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson. Copyright, 1916, by Ben Hecht. The sun was shining in the dirty street. Old women with shapeless bodies waddled along on their way to market. Bearded old men who looked like the fathers of Jerusalem walked flatfooted, nodding back and forth. "The tread of the processional surviving in Halsted Street," thought Moisse, the young dramatist who was moving with the crowd. Children sprawled in the refuse-laden alleys. One of them ragged and clotted with dirt stood half-dressed on the curbing and urinated into the street. Wagons rumbled, filled with fruits and iron and rags and vegetables. Human voices babbled above the noises of the traffic. Moisse watched the lively scene. "Every day it's the same," he thought; "the same smells, the same noise and people swarming over the pavements. I am the only one in the street whose soul is awake. There's a pretty girl looking at me. She suspects the condition of my soul. Her fingers are dirty. Why doesn't she buy different shoes? She thinks I am lost. In five years she will be fat. In ten years she will waddle with a shawl over her head."