"Don't worry," he said; "put a prop under your piano-lid and bring me a chair. I'll work the ivories for you." He played till midnight, drank his free beers between each selection, his face as grave as a judge except when he would wink at me out of the corner of his eye to show his intense enjoyment of the whole situation. You can judge of its effect on the audience when I tell you that one young girl in a pink shirt-waist was so overcome with emotion and so sorry for the sad young man who had to earn his living in any such way, that she laid a ten-cent piece on the piano within reach of my friend's fingers. The smile of intense gratitude which permeated his face--a "thank-God-you-have-saved-me-from-starvation" smile, was part of the evening's enjoyment. He wears the dime now on his watch-chain; he says it is the only money he ever earned by his music; to which one of his club-friends added, "Or in your life." Since that time I have been _persona grata_ to Muffles. Since that time, too, I have studied him at close range: on snowy days--for I like my tramps in winter, with the Bronx a ribbon of white, even though it may be too cold to paint--as well as my outings on Sunday summer mornings when I sit down with his other friends to watch Muffles shave. On one of these days I found a thin, cadaverous, long-legged, long-armed young man behind the bar. He had yellow-white hair that rested on his head like a window-mop, whitey blue eyes, and a pasty complexion. When he craned his neck in his anxiety to get my order right, I felt that his giraffe throat reached down to his waist-line and that all of it would come out of his collar if I didn't make up my mind at once "what it should be." "Who's he, Muffles?" I asked. "Dat's me new bar-keep. I've chucked me job." "What's his name?" "Bowser." "Where did you get him?" "Blew in here one night las' month, purty nigh froze--out of a job and hungry. De Missus got soft on him--she's dat kind, ye know. Yer oughter seen him eat! Well, I guess! Been in a littingrapher's shop--ye kin tell by his fingers. Say, Bowser, show de gentleman yer fingers." Bowser held them up as quickly as if the order had come down the barrel of a Winchester. "And ye oughter see him draw. Gee! if I could draw like him I wouldn't do nothin' else. But I ain't never had nothin' in my head like that. A feller's got to have sumpin' besides school-larnin' to draw like him. Now you're a sketch-artist, and know. Why, he drawed de Sheriff last Sunday sittin' in de porch huggin' his bitters, to de life. Say, Bowse, show de gentleman de picter ye drawed of de Sheriff." Bowser slipped his hand under the bar and brought out a charcoal sketch of a black mustache surrounded by a pair of cheeks, a treble chin, and two dots of eyes.