He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition--a very allegory of Hunger! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded piteously.

This phantom said: "Come with me--please." He locked his arm in Blucher's and walked up the street to where the passengers were few and the light not strong, and then facing about, put out his hands in a beseeching way, and said: "Friend--stranger--look at me! Life is easy to you--you go about, placid and content, as I did once, in my day--you have been in there, and eaten your sumptuous supper, and picked your teeth, and hummed your tune, and thought your pleasant thoughts, and said to yourself it is a good world -- but you've never suffered! You don't know what trouble is--you don't know what misery is--nor hunger! Look at me! Stranger have pity on a poor friendless, homeless dog! As God is my judge, I have not tasted food for eight and forty hours!--look in my eyes and see if I lie! Give me the least trifle in the world to keep me from starving--anything -- twenty-five cents! Do it, stranger--do it, please.

It will be nothing to you, but life to me.

Do it, and I will go down on my knees and lick the dust before you! I will kiss your footprints--I will worship the very ground you walk on! Only twenty-five cents! I am famishing -- perishing--starving by inches! For God's sake don't desert me!" Blucher was bewildered--and touched, too--stirred to the depths.

He reflected.