Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/17

 nature; and as the train pulled into Harlem his world seemed to have contained an infinite number of things which it was going to be next to impossible to leave behind forever.

He was without a plan. He had less than fifty cents in his pocket. He was a country boy without any knowledge of city ways. There was only one thing certain. He could not go home and face his mother. He had to go on, on into that dusk which was so quickly turning into dark. But there was good breeding in John, and his face presented a fine calm.

There had come to him in his homesickness and desperation thoughts of ships and the sea. If he went to work in the city, big as it was, his mother was sure to have him found. And possibly she might have him committed to some institution for the wayward and incorrigible.

He left the elevated at the Battery and made his way by a kind of instinct to Front Street, which had upon one side ships tied to wharves and upon the other the offices of the ship companies, the stores of ship chandlers, and innumerable saloons and lodging houses for sailors.

Here under a lamp-post were two sailors in altercation. They were a little gone in liquor, and there was one who tempted and one who refused.

"I tell you," said the latter, "I'm going to sleep