off from it and leading him into another street, where he
fell into a walk, and slipped his cabbage under his coat
and went off unsuspected in the crowd. When he had
gotten a safe distance away he sat down and devoured
half the cabbage raw, stowing the balance away in his
pockets till the next day.

Just about this time one of the Chicago newspapers,
which made much of the "common people," opened a
"free-soup kitchen" for the benefit of the unemployed.
Some people said that they did this for the sake of the
advertising it gave them, and some others said that their
motive was a fear lest all their readers should be starved
off; but whatever the reason, the soup was thick and hot,
and there was a bowl for every man, all night long.
When Jurgis heard of this, from a fellow "hobo," he
vowed that he would have half a dozen bowls before
morning; but, as it proved, he was lucky to get one, for
there was a line of men two blocks long before the stand,
and there was just as long a line when the place was finally
closed up.

This depot was within the danger-line for Jurgis -- in
the "Levee" district, where he was known; but he went
there, all the same, for he was desperate, and beginning
to think of even the Bridewell as a place of refuge. So
far the weather had been fair, and he had slept out every
night in a vacant lot; but now there fell suddenly a shadow
of the advancing winter, a chill wind from the north and a
driving storm of rain. That day Jurgis bought two drinks
for the sake of the shelter, and at night he spent his last
two pennies in a "stale-beer dive." This was a place kept
by a Negro, who went out and drew off the old dregs of
beer that lay in barrels set outside of the saloons; and after
he had doctored it with chemicals to make it "fizz," he
sold it for two cents a can, the purchase of a can including
the privilege of sleeping the night through upon the floor,
with a mass of degraded outcasts, men and women.

All these horrors afflicted Jurgis all the more cruelly,
because he was always contrasting them with the oppor~
tunities he had lost. For instance, just now it was election

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v?