From one until seven o’clock of this sweltering afternoon, every moment of his time was occupied. The police made it difficult for him to earn his living, for the simple reason that they were constantly making him move on. Not only the regular policemen of the beat, but the officers of the crossing, and the wandering wayfarers from other precincts all came forward at different times and hurried him away. “Get out, now!” ordered one, in a rough and even brutal tone. “Move on. If I catch you around here any more to-day I’ll lock you up.” The old Italian lowered his eyes and hustled his cart out into the sun. “And don’t you come back here any more,” the policeman called after him; then turning to me he exclaimed: “Begob, a man pays a big license to keep a store, and these dagos come in front of his place and take all his business. They ought to be locked up--all of them.” “Haven’t they a right to stand still for a moment?” I inquired. “They have,” he said, “but they haven’t any right to stand in front of any man’s place when he don’t want them there. They drive me crazy, keeping them out of here. I’ll shoot some of them yet.” I looked about to see what if any business could be injured by their stopping and selling fruit, but found only immense establishments dealing in dry goods, drugs, furniture and the like. Some one may have complained, but it looked much more like an ordinary case of official bumptiousness or irritation. At that time, being interested in such types, I chose to follow this one, to see what sort of a home life lay behind him. It was not difficult. By degrees, and much harried by the police, his cart with only a partially depleted stock was pushed to the lower East Side, in Elizabeth Street, to be exact. Here he and his family--a wife and three or four children--occupied two dingy rooms in a typical East Side tenement. Whether he was at peace with his swarthy, bewrinkled old helpmate I do not know, but he appeared to be, and with his several partially grown children. On his return, two of them, a boy and a girl, greeted him cheerfully, and later, finding me interested and following him, and assuming that I was an officer of the law, quickly explained to me what their father did. “He’s a peddler,” said the boy. “He peddles fruit.” “And where does he get his fruit?” I asked. “Over by the Wallabout. He goes over in the morning.” I recalled seeing the long procession of vendors beating a devious way over the mile or more of steel bridge that spans the East River at Delancey Street, at one and two and three of a winter morning. Could this old man be one of these tramping over and tramping back before daylight? “Do you mean to say that he goes over every day?” “Sure.”