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The only man now living of those bunk-house days is Thomas J. Callahan.  He has been attached for many years to Yale University and doing the work of a janitor.  Many Yale men will never forget how “Doc” cared for Dwight Hall.  He is now in charge of Yale Hall.  The circumstances under which I met Doc were rather peculiar.

“Say, bub,” said Gar, the bouncer, to me one day, “what ungodly hour of the mornin’ d’ye git up?”

“At the godly hour of necessity,” I replied.

“Wal, I hev a pal I want ter interjooce to ye at six.”

I met the bouncer and his “pal” at the corner of Broome Street and the Bowery next morning at the appointed hour.

“Dat’s Doc!” said Gar, as he laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

His friend bowed low and in faultless English, said:  “I am more than pleased to meet you.”

“I can give you a pointer on Doc,” the big fellow continued.  “If ye tuk a peaner to th’ top av a mountain an’ let her go down the side sorter ez she pleases, ‘e c’u’d pick up the remains an’ put thim together so’s ye w’u’dn’t know they’d been apart.  Yes, sir; that’s no song an’ dance, an’ ’e c’u’d play any chune iver invented on it.”

Doc laughed and made some explanations.  They had a wheezy old organ in Halloran’s dive, and Doc kept it in repair and played occasionally for them.  Doc had a Rip Van Winkle look.  His hair hung down his back, and his clothes were threadbare and green with age.  His shoes were tied to his feet with wire, and stockings he had none.  Doc had studied in a Medical College until the eve of his graduation.  Then he slipped a cog and went down, down, down, until he landed at Halloran’s dive.  For twelve years he had been selling penny song-sheets on the streets and in saloons.  He was usually in rags, but a score of the wildest inhabitants of that dive told me that Doc was their “good angel.”  He could play the songs of their childhood, he was kind and gentle, and men couldn’t be vulgar in his presence.

I saw in Doc an unusual man, and was able to persuade him to go home with me.  In a week he was a new man, clothed and in his right mind.  He became librarian of a big church library, and our volunteer organist at all the Sunday meetings.

After two years of uninterrupted service as librarian, during which time Doc had been of great service in the bunk-house, I lost him.  Five years later, crossing Brooklyn Bridge on a car, I passed Doc who was walking in the same direction.  At the end of the bridge I planted myself in front of him.  “Doc,” I said, “you will never get away from me again.”  I took him to New Haven, where he has been ever since.

It is needless to say that several years’ work in the midst of such surroundings gives one a hopeless outlook for that kind of work.  In 1891 a movement to establish a municipal lodging house was organized, and I became part of it.  A committee composed largely of business men met in the office of Killaen Van Ransellaer, 56 Wall Street.  In discussing the plan of a municipal lodging house, the “Wayfarers Lodge” in Boston, an institution of the character under discussion, was pointed out as a model, and it was decided to send a representative to Boston to investigate and make a report on it.