Knowingly, smilingly, the city crowds passed him by. They saw the raw stranger stand in the gutter and stretch his neck at the tall buildings. At this they ceased to smile, and even to look at him. It had been done so often. A few glanced at the antique valise to see what Coney "attraction" or brand of chewing gum he might be thus dinning into his memory. But for the most part he was ignored. Even the newsboys looked bored when he scampered like a circus clown out of the way of cabs and street cars.
     At Eighth Avenue stood "Bunco Harry," with his dyed mustache and shiny, good-natured eyes. Harry was too good an artist not to be pained at the sight of an actor overdoing his part. He edged up to the countryman, who had stopped to open his mouth at a jewelry store window, and shook his head.
     "Too thick, pal," he said, critically - "too thick by a couple of inches. I don't know what your lay is; but you've got the properties too thick. That hay, now - why, they don't even allow that on Proctor's circuit any more."
With Josefina gone, Jakub has another problem. Although her crystalline voice was untrained, his wife had earned much more than he by singing in the vestries of churches, at private parties or on the bridge, accompanied by her scratchy cassette recorder.
     When the weather is fine he earns a few crowns sketching tourists on the bridge, just as he has always done, but it is very little compared to what his wife, with her waist length black hair and wide red mouth, could make. Sometimes she would come back with more money than he could make in a week. Visiting Americans and Japanese were, she told him with her glittering smile, extremely generous.