And it is exactly that about them which has always interested me. For, by and large, I have never been able to feel that they either craved or deserved the need of that sympathy that we so freely extend to others of a less sturdy and different character. In truth, they are never as poor physically and nervously as many of those who, though socially fallen, yet appear to be better placed in the matter of clothes, food and mood. They are, in the main, neither lean nor dispirited, and they take life with too jaunty an air to permit one to be distressed about them. They remind me more of gulls or moles, or some different and unsocial animal that still finds in man his rightful prey or source of supply. And I am positive that theirs is a disposition, either inherited or made so by circumstances, which has not too much chemic opposition to their lackadaisical state, that prefers it even to some other forms of existence. Summer or winter I have seen them here and there, in the great city, but never in those poorer neighborhoods, frequented by those who are really in need, and always with the air of physical if not material comfort hovering about them, and that in the face of garments that would better become an ashcan than a man. The rags. The dirt. And yet how often of a summer’s evening have I not seen them on the stones of doorways and the planks of docks and lumber yards, warm and therefore comfortable, resting most lazily and snoring loudly, as though their troubles or irritations, whatever they were, were far from them. And in these same easier seasons have I not seen them making their way defiantly or speculatively among the enormous crowds on the principal streets of the city, gazing interestedly and alertly into the splendid shopwindows, and thinking what thoughts and contemplating what prospects! It is not from these that the burglars are recruited or the pickpockets, as the police will tell you. And the great cities do not ordinarily attract them; though they come, occasionally, drawn, I suppose, by the hope of novelty, and interested, quite as is Dives in Egypt or India, by what they see. Now and then you will behold one, as have I, being “ragged” by one of those idle mischievous gangs of the city into whose heartless clutches he has chanced to fall. His hat will be seized and pulled or crushed down over his eyes, his matted hair or beard pulled, straws or rags or paper shoved between his back and his coat and himself made into a veritable push-ball or punching-bag to be shoved here and there, before he is allowed to depart. And for no offense other than that he is as he is. Yet whether they are spiritually outraged or depressed by this I would not be able to say. To me they have ever appeared to be immune to what would spiritually degrade and hence torture and depress another.