long- and beseechingly into the eyes of the adolescents I passed, but too timid to accost any. Those who had known me all my life, had they met me now, would have wondered what could have brought into the then theatre and red-light district of the foreign laboring classes of the city, at an hour approaching midnight, a timid youth, hitherto called an "innocent," naturally pious, and generally esteemed for his intellectual tastes. My friends would never have dreamed that I would frequent that red-light district near midnight, and would never have believed it if any one told them that I was there for no good purpose.
Arrived at the southern end of the Bowery, I turned into New Bowery, because it looked dark and crimeinviting. I roamed for another half-hour in the dark, deserted streets of this quarter, accosting one or two young dockrats who were still abroad, but they simply ransacked my pockets, gave me a parting blow, and went on their way. Moistening my handkerchief at a drinking fountain, I washed my bloodstained face. Finally, after midnight, thoroughly sobered by my disappointments and physical smarting, I boarded a car. Securing my key from its hiding place, I let myself into my lodgings without any one ever learning of my nocturnal ramble.
How shall such conduct on the part of one of the members of an intellectual and decent community be judged? Let not the reader in pharasaical self-complacency—an attitude of mind all too common in dealing with the victims of congenital defects of mind or brain—begin to set his own virtue over against the apparent depravity of
