The millionaire and the shivering beggar at his gates may differ in every other respect, but they have one feeling in common. Both desire to live, and to live one must eat. The most important concern of mankind, then, is to get something to eat. It is open to all to secure this desideratum by labor of one kind or another. Men choose different avocations to this end. One goes down in a drain at 7 o’clock in the morning and throws dirt till six at night, and gets a dollar and a quarter for it. Another creeps down to a store in the dark and silent hours of the morning, and by the aid of a jimmey and a bit and brace secures a sum varying in amount from a few dollars up to several thousands. These are representatives of two great classes in the community—the toilers of the day and the prowlers of the night. There are all degrees of prosperity in the ranks of the former and all depths of vileness and degradation in those of the latter. During the day they are distinctly apart. The banker, the lawyer, and the shop-man pass the gambler and the procuress on the streets and know them not. But when night assumes his dim dominion over the world smug respectability may be seen watching with bated breath
THE RATTLING OF THE DICE
upon the table or dallying with sin in the by-ways of the city.
Thus they sometimes mingle, surreptitiously and fearfully.
The night hawks! They are to be found in every great city. They are the excrescences of civilization. In cities of great population they are a constant menace to the public peace. Toronto is, perhaps, no worse or no better in this respect than other cities of equal population. That we have a sufficient number of these birds of darkness the police assert, and the newspaper man, whose duties take him occasionally to their haunts, knows. They are a strange race with a terrible philosophy.
“Why don’t you brace up?” was asked of a young man who looked pretty miserable in the early morning. He was evidently suffering from the effects of his last night’s orgies.
“I wish somebody would give me a chance to brace up,” was the answer given, with a weary smile. “I know a nice bar where we could both brace up.”
“Well, now, joking aside, you know your present life is killing you. You are still a young man; you have a good trade. Why don’t you get to work and avoid all this trouble. Compare yourself with that young fellow on the other side of the street with his dinner can. His eye is clear; his tongue is clean and his lips are moist. Are yours?”
“That’s very well put, but that story has got two sides. I’m feelin’ a little tough now; but by noon I wouldn’t change places with Vanderbilt. Ten minutes after I get my first rye I’ll be in as good shape as the coon with the dinner-pail; then he’ll have to sweat and work all day while I lay off beside a cool keg of lager or other choice stimilants. You can’t preach to me about