Do you know Abingdon Square? It is a small, irregularly shaped triangle of asphalt situated on the lower West Side, and at the intersecting-point of Eighth Avenue and Hudson Street. The houses that front upon it have seen better days. Many of them are now the quarters of cheap political clubs or centres of foreign revolutionary propaganda. It is a neighborhood that has finally lost all semblance to gentility and has become frankly and unreservedly shabby. A square, mind you, and not a park, for there is neither blade of grass nor tree in all of its dreary expanse. Half a block to the north lies a minute gore of land surrounded by an iron fence, and here are flowers and greenery upon which the eye may rest and be satisfied. But in Abingdon Square proper there is only the music-stand, that occupies the middle of the miniature plaza, a hideous wooden structure in which one of the city bands plays on alternate Sunday afternoons during the summer. However, open space counts in the city, and the air circulates a trifle more freely through the square than it does in the side streets--at least, that is the opinion of the neighborhood people, and they flock there on a hot night like seals at a blow-hole. Even the submerged tenth must come up to breathe now and then. During the dreadful passage of a hot wave from the West one may count them by the dozens, coatless and even shirtless wretches, lying prone on the flag-stones like fish made ready for the grid. Occasionally, a street-cleaning "White Wings" will be compassionate enough to open a fire-hydrant, under pretence of flushing the gutters, and then, for a few minutes, there is joy in Abingdon Square. Women line the curb, cooling their feet in the rushing flood; the men light their pipes and contentedly watch the children as they paddle about. There is the echo of mountain brooks in the gush of the water as it roars from the hydrant. With eyes tight closed one may conjure up the phantasma of green leaves waving and of meadows knee-deep with lush grasses and starred with ox-eyes. Such is Abingdon Square on a night in early August when first the dog-star begins to rage. Now my friend Esper Indiman is a social philosopher; life in all its phases interests him tremendously. Consequently, he likes to take long rides on trolley-cars. He calls them his vaudeville in miniature, and sometimes the performance is amusing--I acknowledge it freely. But to-night the actors were few and the play dull. I began to yawn. The car, one of the Eighth Avenue line bound down-town, swung round a curve into Abingdon Square, and Indiman touched my arm. "What's going on over there?" he said. Although it was not a concert night, there was a crowd around the band-stand. It looked as though some one was haranguing the assemblage from the vantage-point of the music pavilion--a local political orator or perhaps a street preacher. "Salvation Army," I suggested.