I went further with my half-dollars. I learned what a half-dollar means to a man in a sandwich sign in the cold in winter. There was no case in which the eagerness, the surprise, the astonishment was not interesting if not pathetic. They were not expecting the Christmas holidays to offer them any suggestion of remembrance. It did not seem real that any one should stop and give them anything. Yet here was I, and apparently their wildest anticipations were outreached. I cannot help thinking, as I close, of an old gray-haired Irish gentleman--for that he was, by every mark of refinement of feature and intelligence of eye--who had come so low as to be the perambulating representative of a restaurant, with a double sign strapped over his shoulders. His hair was thin, his face pale, his body obviously undernourished, but he carried himself with dignity and undisturbed resignation, though he must have been deeply conscious of his state. I saw him for a number of days during the winter season, walking up and down the west side of Sixth Avenue, and then I saw him no more. But during that time a sense of what it means to accept the slings and arrows of fortune with fortitude and equanimity burned itself deeply into my mind. He was so much better than that which he was compelled to do. He walked so patiently to and fro, his eyes sometimes closed, his lips repeating something. I wondered, what? Whether in the depths of this slough of his despond this man had not risen superior to his state, his mind on those high cold verities which after all are above the pointless little existence that we lead here, this existence with its petty gauds and its pretty and petty vanities. I hope so. But I do know that a stinging sense of the slings and arrows of fortune overcame me, never to be eradicated, and I quoted to myself that arresting, forceful inquiry of one William Shakespeare: “For who would bear the whip and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes. Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life?” Not you, you think? Boast not. For after all, who shall say what a day or a year or a lifetime may not bring forth? And with Whatley cannot we all say: “There, but for the grace of God, go I”--a beggar, an outcast of fortune, a sandwich man, no less, to whom the meaning of life is that he shall be a foil to comfort, a contrast to prosperity, a commentary on health. To be the antithesis of what life would prefer to be--what could be more degraded than that? THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF LITTLE ITALY