“Any good?”

“Nix. Rotten. One night y’ play an’ th’ next y’ don’t an’ y’ gotta …”

“How many do they want here?”

“I dunno, it’s a rotten bizness; not’ing in this bizness no more. I’m goin’ t’…”

“Hey, y’ rummy, git offa my foot. Whaddaya t’ink I yam?”

A sinister sort of meekness controls these men; hold men patient who are hard of face; docile who seem to be cut for any sort of business; pathetically anxious who seem to be cast for any rough hazard.

These are the men who may be seen on park benches; at saloon corners; who accost passers in the name of charity; who carry restaurant signs; who may be seen every morning at newspaper offices eagerly scanning the want columns; who carry a newspaper as if it were something precious; who hurry along with a sidelong gait; whose shoes make a sliding noise on the pavement.

These are men unshaven of face, pallid of complexion. Some of them wear overcoats turned up at the collar, sagging at the skirt with a rag-tag of frayed lining showing; bulging at the pocket with some unimaginable personal freight. Some of them wear no overcoats, some no vests, others no collars. Some, with short, shrunken trousers, show bare red ankles. There are trousers that have settled into fixed folds about the shoes as if they had not been doffed or pulled up for some nights. The feet point out at a loutish angle, or point in pigeonwise. There are flat feet, feet broken at the instep, spread out like a duck’s—oozing damp, hideous and evidently filthy, stub-ended, low in the instep, too large. They shift, shuffle, and twist about like wounded and helpless members. The hands that go with them are red and dirty; they are rubbed against trousers impotently, for want of something better to do. These men stand with the necks habitually drawn into their collars, their shoulders hunched. They have an unhealthy colour and they speak in voices coarsened by whisky and by the weather. They crane at the door like beggars waiting for a hand-out.

It is ten o’clock. Red Beard has forsaken the sidewalk and is standing on a box or something at the stage door, looking at the findings of his advertisement. He scowls heavily and appears to be disgusted with what he sees.

The crowd edges closer. Those on the outside push those within. The crowd becomes a pack. Necks crane upwards. A hoarse voice meant to be jocular wheezes:

“Hey, bo, y’ want me, don’t y’s? Ain’t I t’ cheese?”

A laugh swells up, but dies instantly before the sardonic sneer under Red Beard’s hedge. Some one says: “Huh, wot ’d’yu’s t’ink you are, a primy donny star?”

Red Beard’s jaw moves and he is heard to mutter:

“Gawd, what a rotten bunch!”

A uniform pushing and shoving begins. A clownish, uncouth eagerness manifests itself and animates the crowd. It is as if they were scrambling for apples. The scuffling of feet sounds like an unrhythmic dance. On the outside gaunt, bent legs push to get in. On the inside, in the middle of the jam, scrawny necks stretch up, heads stare.

A hoarse clacking murmur, resembling more than anything else the quacking of geese going to water, is evidence of a certain sort of talk going on within the confines of the crowd. It runs in a monotone and reveals no anger, no impatience, none of the mob frenzy that might be expected here. A futile eagerness!