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"An' then them boots oh, gee!" "Are they so bad as that?" "Geoff, they sure are the punkest pavement pounders in little old N' York. Why, a Dago hodcarrier wouldn't be seen dead in 'em; look at th' patches. Gee whizz! Where did His Whiskers dig 'em up from?" "I fancy they were his own once," answered Mr. Ravenslee, surveying his bulbous, be-patched footgear a little ruefully.

Now, stubborn facts are like stone walls, against which theories often butt out their beauty and their power. It is well known to almost every one nowadays that well-cooked food, whether it be potatoes, meat and bread, fish, or anything else worthy the name of food, will well maintain, indefinitely, either the philosopher or the hodcarrier.

They were common laborers. One was a hodcarrier, and a strapping fellow. When he arrived at the institution, he was at once placed in the violent ward, though his "violence" consisted of nothing more than an annoying sort of irresponsibility. He irritated the attendants by persistently doing certain trivial things after they had been forbidden.

And yet there are many who believe that there is in fact no other fate for any man; that every business is in the long run a belittling business; that whether you are a hodcarrier or a poet, as you go on in your calling, "shades of the prison-house" will close upon you and custom lie upon you "heavy as frost and deep almost as life." Let us look at this deep pessimism at its darkest.