Once it was evening in winter in a city and the great blue darkness had fallen upon the low plains, the waters, and the frozen marshes; the darkness had grown gray and misty; and after that, as usual within the city, it had become dead, cold, and dingy black. The long misty streets with their feeble pale-blue lamps were dingy; and though many hurrying people, rattling black gasoline motor vehicles, and broken dirty tram-cars passed in them, yet they remained dreary. One of the half dozen very long streets, which lie across the others and meet in the lower center of the city like the spokes of a half-wheel, was dark when I walked into it. It had large furniture shops full of colored lamps; tobacco and shoe shops well lighted up; and Jews’ shops with every sort of cheap glittering merchandise to catch the eyes of the crowd of stupid whites and negroes who occupied this quarter; yet it seemed bleak and dark. The people hurried along silently in the shadows; old snow lay frozen in the dim dirty corners; and the dust was thick. Over the roofs the sky seemed particularly black, foggy and cold. It was night. For a time there was no sound except those of the vehicles flying over the rough pavement, the pounding tram-cars that passed, and the shoes of the hurrying people; but at last, at intervals above the other sounds there became audible what seemed to be a voice raised in shouting or speaking; and on coming to a place where two mean dark side streets met I found on the pavement of one of them a short, plump, gentle but very earnest and prepossessing negro of forty who was urging upon passers the principles of Jesus’ teaching. He used the inflection and diction of most negroes in this part of the world, but he was neatly dressed and wore a greatcoat, though his head was bare, for he had placed his round black hat against an iron hydrant for the reception of coins. Four or five men who had turned aside from the main street were listening to him; more, however, were going into the half-screened drinking places all about. Besides, the farther side of the street in which he stood contained a row of little dark wooden buildings that held negro brothels. It was a dusty winter night. “You men, naow,” the negro was crying in a ringing, pleasing voice, “you got to be good! You got to do as God says! It ain’t gwine do you no good to pray to God if you don’t do as He says! Don’t you go to fightin’ and killin’ and gamblin’ and then pray to God. It ain’t gwine do you no good! First you got to quit yo’ fightin’, quit yo’ killin’, quit yo’ drinkin’, quit yo’ gamblin’, quit yo’ swarin’, quit yo’ whore-mongerin’: God does not wish you to do these things! Then you go to Him and pray! And he’s gwine hear what you say!”