Hitherto all the love, all the honors, all the applause of this world, and all the rewards of heaven, have been lavished on the fortunate and the strong; and the portion of the unfriended Bottom Dog, in his adversity and weakness, has been curses, blows, chains, the gallows and everlasting damnation. I shall plead, then, for those who are loathed and tortured and branded as the sinful and unclean; for those who have hated us and wronged us, and have been wronged and hated by us. I shall defend them for right's sake, for pity's sake and for the benefit of society and the race. For these also are of our flesh, these also have erred and gone astray, these also are victims of an inscrutable and relentless Fate. If it concerns us that the religions of the world are childish dreams or nightmares; if it concerns us that our penal laws and moral codes are survivals of barbarism and fear; if it concerns us that our most cherished and venerable ideas of our relations to God and to each other are illogical and savage, then the case for the Bottom Dog concerns us nearly. If it moves us to learn that disease may be prevented, that ruin may be averted, that broken hearts and broken lives may be made whole; if it inspires us to hear how beauty may be conjured out of loathsomeness and glory out of shame; how waste may be turned to wealth and death to life, and despair to happiness, then the case for the Bottom Dog is a case to be well and truly tried. Moleskin Joe[A] [A] By permission of E. P. Dutton & Co. (_From "Children of the Dead End"_) BY PATRICK MACGILL (See pages 32, 47) 'Twas towards the close of a fine day on the following summer that we were at work in the dead end of a cutting, Moleskin and I, when I, who had been musing on the quickly passing years, turned to Moleskin and quoted a line from the Bible. "Our years pass like a tale that is told," I said. "Like a tale that is told damned bad," answered my mate, picking stray crumbs of tobacco from his waistcoat pocket and stuffing them into the heel of his pipe. "It's a strange world, Flynn. Here today, gone tomorrow; always waiting for a good time comin' and knowin' that it will never come. We work with one mate this evenin', we beg for crumbs with another on the mornin' after. It's a bad life, ours, and a poor one, when I come to think of it, Flynn." "It is all that," I assented heartily.