“Ten cents!” Admeh Drake muttered to himself, as he felt the first shock of the cool breeze on Kearney Street, “what in Jericho can a man do with a dime, anyway? It won’t even buy a decent bed; it won’t pay the price of a drink at the Hoffman Bar. Coffee John is full of prunes!” He walked up the cheap side of the street, looking aimlessly at the shop windows. “I figure it out about this way,” he thought, “I ain’t going to earn a million with two nickels; if I make a raise, it’ll be just by durn luck. So it don’t matter how I begin, nor what I do at all. I just got to go it blind, and trust to striking a trail that’ll lead to water. I’ll take up with the first idea I get, and ride for it as far as it goes.” With this decision, he gave up the unnecessary strain of thought and floated with the human current, letting it carry him where it would. Now the main Gulf Stream of San Francisco life sets down Kearney and up Market Street; this is the Rialto, the promenade of cheap actors, rounders and men about town. It is the route of the amatory ogler and the grand tour of the demi-monde. Of a Saturday afternoon the course is given over to human peacocks and popinjays, fresh from the matinees, airing “the latest” in garb and finery; but there is a late guard abroad after the theatres close in the evening, when the relieving prospect of an idle morrow gives a merry license for late hours and convivial comradeship. Among these raglans and opera-cloaks, Admeh’s rusty brown jacket was carried along like an empty bottle floating down stream. He turned into Market Street at Lotta’s Fountain, and had drifted a block northerly, when the brilliant letters of an electric sign across the way caught his eye: “Biograph Theatre. Admittance, ten cents.” The hint was patent and alluring; there seemed to be no gainsaying such a tip from Fate. Over he went with never a thought as to where he would spend the night without money, and in two minutes Coffee John’s dime slid under the window of the little ticket office in front. “Hurry up!” said the man in the box, “the performance is just about to begin.” Admeh made his way upstairs, passed through a corridor lined with a cheap and unnecessary display of dried fishes in a long glass case, and came to the entrance of a dingy hall, dimly illuminated. At the far end of the sloping floor was a Lilliputian stage. A scant score of spectators were huddled together on the front seats and here Admeh took his place, between two soldiers in khaki uniform and a fat negress. As he sat down, the curtain rose and two comedians entered, to go through a dreary specialty turn of the coarsest “knockabout” description. Admeh yawned. Even the negress was bored, and the two infantry corporals sneered openly. Next came a plump lady of uncertain age who carolled a popular song and did a frisky side-step to the chorus.