"A heathenish sort of a mission that," replied Vox, looking at the fellow, who was trying, as he said, to find his night-key to get his boots off with. After a moment's hesitation, Vox added: "All right, doctor; you've had as hard a field with me, if it wasn't so dirty a one. I'll take him for a sobering walk in the drizzle, and then get him into better quarters than he has here."
Vox had his hands full with his job, and at times his arms full too. His companion insisted that the Bowery sidewalk, covered with sleet, was a toboggan-slide, and that he was tumbling off the sled. What could Vox do with his protégé? He couldn't walk him or slide him all night. A policeman proposed to relieve him of his anxiety by taking them both to the station-house, but was persuaded not to perform this heroic exploit by the man's assurance that his pal's legs hadn't any snakes in them, and by Vox's demonstration that he could stand alone. Then Vox thought of the story of the good Samaritan, with rising respect for the priest that passed by on the other side. Next, having got into the charity business, he envied the Samaritan at least his ass, "instead," as Vox soliloquized, "of making an ass of myself." He thought of taking the fellow to some hotel, paying for his lodging, and hiring the clerk to see that he was properly sobered off in the morning; but concluded that, whatever might have been the case on the road to Jericho, there was no innkeeper on the Bowery whom he could trust with such a commission, or who would trust him to call in the morning and pay the bill. He could take him back to Brady's Harbor, he thought; but when they turned about the man declared that he wouldn't walk up a toboggan-slide, and sat down on the sidewalk for another ride.
The flash of a passing cab let a little light in upon his problem. Hailing the driver, with whose help he got his load into the vehicle, he told him to drive to No. — Madison Avenue, where he had his own day quarters—elegant rooms, fitted up for his instruction of the fashionable "daughters of music" at six dollars an hour. Sweezy, the janitor, was roused up, and with his assistance Vox was able to congratulate himself that he had gone "one better" on the good Samaritan, in that he had lodged his man in finer chambers. He could not help laughing at the incongruousness of the snoring mass and the elegant divan on which it lay. He thought of Bottom the weaver, with the ass's head, in the lap of Titania, and, as he piled the cushions so that the fellow would not tumble off, addressed him in the words of the fairy:
"Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk roses in thy sleek smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy."
But tears are near to laughter, and as Vox contemplated his completed work he had to sit down a moment and cry.
"It's a hard sight, sir," said Sweezy, "but bless you, Mr. Vox, the best of us has just sich among our closest friends. I wish, sir, as how it was my own boy, Tommy, you had found the night." And Sweezy cried too.
Sweezy promised to take an early look at the man in the morning when he turned on the steam heat. Vox went away to his boarding-house around the corner, vexed at the doctor for getting him into such a scrape, yet feeling down in the depths of his heart a satisfaction that more than half compensated him for his rough experience. He fell asleep thinking of the good Samaritan, Bottom with the ass's head, Salvation Army lasses, and the Prohibition party; and, in the midst of a horrid dream, woke up imagining himself drunk and about to fall off a precipice.
Before breakfast next morning he went around to the rooms to look after his charge. The fellow had vamosed. Sweezy was taking account of the furniture, and, though nothing was missing, and only a lamp-shade broken, declared that Vox had been victimized by a sharper:
"A regular sharper, sir. I thought so when you brought him in. You ought to have knowed, sir, at a glance of him, what he was. You've nussed, sir, a wiper in your bosom, and it's a mercy, sir, a mercy if he hasn't stung you no worse. Is your pocket-book with you? You ought at least to have took off his boots. That spot on the cover will never come out without piecing."
Vox contemplated the scene of his first charity exploit much as Bonaparte did the battle-field of Waterloo. He had but one remark to make, which was: