He was seized with a curiosity to know what plan in living these people had who crossed his way on the streets; if they were disappointed, like him.

Humbled, he hardly knew why: vague, uncertain in action.

Quit dogging old Huff with his advice; trotted about the streets with a cowed look, that, if one could have seen into the jaded old heart under his snuffy waistcoat, would have seemed pitiful enough.
He went sometimes to read the papers to old Tim Poole, who was bed-ridden, and did not pish or pshaw once at his maundering about secession, or the misery in his back.

Went to church sometimes: the sermons were bigotry, always, to his notion, sitting on a back seat, squirting tobacco-juice about him; but the simple, old-fashioned hymns brought the tears to his eyes:--"They sounded to him like his mother's voice, singing in Paradise:" he hoped she could not see how things had gone on here,--how all that was honest and strong in his life had fallen in that infernal mill.

Once or twice he went down Crane Alley, and lumbered up three pair of stairs to the garret where Kitts had his studio,--got him orders, in fact, for two portraits; and when that pale-eyed young man, in a fit of confidence, one night, with a very red face drew back the curtain from his grand "Fall of Chapultepec," and watched him with a lean and hungry look, Knowles, who knew no more about painting than a gorilla, walked about, looking through his fist at it, saying, "how fine the chiaroscuro was, and that it was a devilish good thing altogether." "Well, well," he soothed his conscience, going downstairs, "maybe that bit of canvas is as much to that poor chap as the Phalanstery was once to another fool." And so went on through the gas-lit streets into his parishes in cellars and alleys, with a sorer heart, but cheerfuller words, now that he had nothing but words to give.
The only place where he hardened his heart was in the hospital with Holmes.