THE TWO JEANS
“To every man there come noble thoughts that pass across his heart like great white birds.”
—Maeterlinck.
The Two Jeans
“It is always hard times on the Bowery,” my diminutive informant told me. He was a new comer to our Colony. He, in company with another young man, had made his appearance an hour or two before, but I had not been able to talk with him, except to assure him that he and his friend might remain with us one night, at least. “Yes, sir,” he continued, “without money a man is a dead one; even in this strange haunt of stranger men money is a daily need. Of course, some men who know the hidden ways can get along on as little as twenty cents a day, or less, but for myself I could not exist on less than thirty-five cents.”
The figures he mentioned seemed modest enough to me. “Couldn’t you earn that much?” I asked him.