I think it was this last consideration that had most weight with me as Lovey and I stood gazing at the multifarious activities of the scene. There were men in sight, busy with all kinds of occupations. They were like ants; they were like bees. They came and went and pulled and hauled and hammered and climbed and dug, and every man’s eyes seemed bent on his task as if it were the only one in the world. “It means two or three dollars a day to ’em if they ain’t,” Lovey grunted, when I had pointed this fact out to him. “Don’t suppose they’d work if they didn’t ’ave to, do ye?” “I dare say they wouldn’t. But my point is that they do work. It’s Emerson who says that every man is as lazy as he dares to be, isn’t it?” “Oh, anybody could say that.” “And in spite of the fact that they’d rather be lazy, they’re all doing something. Look at them. Look at them in every direction to which your eyes can turn—droves of them, swarms of them, armies of them—every one bent on something into which he is putting a piece of himself!” “Well, they’ve got ’omes or boardin’-’ouses. It’s easy enough to git a job when ye can give an address. But when ye carn’t—” We were to test that within a minute or two. Fifteen or twenty brownies were digging in a ditch. Of all the forms of work in sight it seemed that which demanded the least in the way of special training. Approaching a fiercely mustachioed man of clearly defined nationality, I said, “Say, boss, could you give my buddy and me a job?” Rolling toward me a pair of eyes that would have done credit to a bandit in an opera, he emitted sounds which I can best transcribe as, “Where d’live?” “That’s the trouble,” I answered, truthfully. “We don’t live anywhere and we should like to.” He looked us over. “Beat it,” he commanded, nodding toward the central quarters of the city. “But, boss,” I pleaded, “my buddy and I haven’t got a quarter between us.” He pointed with his thumb over his left shoulder. “Getta out.” “We haven’t got a nickel,” I insisted; “we haven’t got a cent.” “Cristoforo, ca’ da cop.” As Cristoforo sprang from the ditch to look for a policeman, Lovey and I shuffled off again into the rain.