who remain year in and year out in our midst; and it is of these miserables who have made Toronto their field of action, or rather inaction, that I wish particularly to speak. Go down, let us say, to the Market square, any day during the winter, or in the months of navigation to the Esplanade. Hovering around the doors of the omnipresent “saloon” they lounge, a motley crowd. Occasionally, if the weather is not too rainy or cold, they may be seen posing on the lee side of a corner house, smoking clay pipes of unknown age, or chewing black strap in meditative mood. But the grog shop is always their objective point, and they seldom go far from its beery borders. Occasionally they invest the barroom to thaw themselves out in cold weather, and with a faint hope that someone will “set ’em up,” but they seldom stay long, for they know they are not wanted by the proprietor, who hesitates not to make them aware of the fact, and the seeker after spiritual comfort, after taking a long last, lingering look at the array of bottles, secures his overcoat upon him with its solitary button, and goes forth again into the cheerless streets. These unfortunates eke out a miserable existence in the winter time by transferring dark diamonds from the carts to the household coal bins, shoveling snow and doing odd jobs of all sorts, by which they manage to get hold of a quarter or so, and on receipt of the same betake themselves to a grog shop, taking care to choose one where a layout of pulpy and scoriac liver, yellow ochre-like mustard, and stale bread form the menu of the free lunch. How on earth they manage to exist at all during the long winter would be a deep and perplexing mystery, were it not from the knowledge of the fact that there is such a place as “Castle Green” on the banks of the Don, where a great many of them pass the happy hours away under sentences from “the colonel.” In fact, too many of them. The jail is simply a harbor of refuge, to which they, by getting drunk or disorderly, can easily find their way, for notwithstanding the fact that these poor wretches have little comfort or enjoyment to look forward to in their hard journey of life, they prefer the cell and jail corridor, “skilly” and bread and water, and loss of liberty as well, to being half starved and in danger of freezing to death to the dignity of a few citizen. Summer is the most propitious season for the bummer. When spring comes in earnest and navigation commences he changes venue from the inhospitable market square and its surroundings, and seeks the busy Esplanade with its outlying wharves where he, although not belonging to any organized stevedores gang, picks up a good many jobs in helping to load and unload vessels of all kinds, when he may be said to revel in comparative wealth, though his outward man is, as to dress, unchanged, for he, like many other philosophers, treats with scorn the vanity of dress. CHAPTER XVII. A VAG BY CHOICE.