But one unfortunate day he was obliged to go to the city. By chance he met an old associate and was invited to take a social glass. And while in the saloon he met a bad woman who had much influence over him in past days. She knew that he had married and left the gang, and she set about to bring him back. It was her weakness to lead men astray. She was not all bad, nor had she always been bad. Once she had been a good girl, full of hope and happy dreams; but her own weakness gained a victory over her, and she fell. Even then she was not all bad. Many the poor woman and half starved hobo had eaten at her expense, and on many occasions she stooped and kissed a weeping child on the street and tried to soothe its sorrowing heart. Did she love Theodore Radden? No one will ever know, but many thought she did, and that her love knew no moral code of honor, nor cared anything for public opinion. She already knew what opinion the world entertained for her—what need she care for public opinion? And Theodore Radden fell a victim to his own weakness. He blamed the woman for it all, just the same as Adam did; but nobody took Adam seriously, nor will they take Theodore Radden’s word for it. A week later the woman crawled to the street from a tenement house, bleeding from several ugly wounds in her breast. Before she died she told them that Theodore Radden had shot her in a drunken brawl, accusing her of parting him from his wife; to which accusation she confessed her guilt, and said she deserved to die at his hands. Inside the house the police found Theodore Radden—dead. He had shot himself through the head, after shooting the woman who tempted him from the paradise where now only a brokenhearted woman was leaving to go out into the shadows of sorrow and live her lonely life to the end. She had never fallen, and she knew not how to forgive the woman who had led her husband to his death. CRIPPLE JOE AND THE SHOWMAN Returning home from Reading on a Sunday not long ago, I was forced to lie over at Pottsville for three long hours. I was angry with myself for leaving Reading on Sunday, for the trains are so infernally chaotic and uncertain on this day of mental distress. I must reach Williamsport in time to catch the evening train on the Pennsy at 7.10, or be obliged to lie over until Monday morning. Everybody in the station was feeling about as blue as I was, for we were all travelers, and opposed to three hours of monotonous delay. I walked the station outside and inside for about an hour, and once as I passed the door leading into the toilet room I heard a plaintive voice at my feet. I looked down and beheld a small body—a wee boy sitting flat on the floor. He was looking up to me and speaking, but I could not distinguish the words. I stooped down and asked the boy to repeat his words: “Won’t you help a poor cripple?”