§ 45 Driven Beyond His Strength
There was a down-and-outer, who made a precarious living as a sandwich man. Encased front and back, like a turtle in its shell, between broad boards which bore advertisements for a dairy lunch, he marched the Bowery all day long for wages barely sufficient to keep body and soul together.
One day, as he plodded his weary route, he saw a shining coin lying upon the sidewalk. Instantly he set his foot upon it, and then, stooping with difficulty because of his wooden waistcoat, he clutched it in his eager fingers and raised it to his eyes. His heart inside of him gave a great throb. It was a twenty-dollar gold piece. He was wealthy beyond his wildest ambitions.
Across the street was an excavation for a new building. He hurried thither. Standing on the edge of the digging he unbuckled the straps which bound the squares of planking to him, and, kicking them to pieces with a glad, exultant cry, he flung the shattered emblems of his servitude down into the hole below. Then straightway he departed for the nearest saloon. Stalking in, a triumphant figure even in his tatters, he slapped his precious gold piece down upon the bar and called for a drink of whiskey. It was to have been the first of a long and gorgeous succession of drinks of whiskey.
Some one jostled him in the side. He turned his head, and when he looked back again his double eagle mysteriously had vanished, and the barkeeper was motioning him to depart.
He protested, naturally. Whereupon the barkeeper reached for the bung starter, swung it with a skill born of long practice, and struck him squarely between the eyes. A moment later the ex-sandwich man found himself sprawling on the sidewalk, his happy visions gone forever.
A prey to melancholy, filled with deep disappointments and a yet deeper sense of injustice, he got upon his feet and started to limp away.
Next door to the saloon was a basement barber shop. From it at this instant there emerged a Bowery mission worker, an elderly gentleman of a benevolent aspect, his pink jowls newly scraped and his face powdered. As he climbed up the steps to the level of the sidewalk this gentleman bent over to refasten a loosened shoelace.
Now, to the best of his knowledge and belief, the derelict never before had seen the missionary, but as the latter stooped, presenting before him an expanse of black coat tails, the misanthrope hauled off and dealt the gentle stranger a terrific kick.
With a yell of astonishment and pain the clergyman landed ten feet away.
“What did you mean by that?” he demanded, rubbing the seat of his trousers with both hands. “Why did you kick me?”
“Oh,” said the ex-sandwich man, in tones of an uncontrollable annoyance, “you’re always tying your shoestring!”