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"I always had an idea they was sissy fellows," he went on; "but a guy can't be a sissy an' think the thoughts they ht to write stuff that sends the blood chasin' through a feller like he'd had a drink on an empty stomach

"I used to think everybody was a sissy asn't a tough guy I was a tough guy all right, an' I was hty proud of it I ain't anytime; but before I took a tue I'd a-hated your fine talk, an' your poetry, an' the thing about you that uy for a hand-out

"I'd a-hated ht that I could ever talk irl--a nice girl--called me a mucker once, an' a coward I was both; but I had the reputation of bein' the toughest guy on the West Side, an' I thought I was a e! I nearly did; but so held my hand from it, an' lately I've liked to think thatindecent that was really a part of me I hate to think that I was such a beast at heart as I acted like all hty slow, an' I'ettin' on She helped me most, of course, an' now you're helpin' et hed

"It IS odd," he said, "how our viewpoints change with changed environ of the years Time was, Billy, when I'd have hated you as much as you would have hated me I don't know that I should have said hate, for that is not exactly the word It was more conte upon that intellectual or social plane to which I considered I had been born

"I thought of people who reat unwashed' I pitied them, and I honestly believe now that in the bottom of my heart I considered them of different clay than I, and with souls, if they possessed such things, about on a par with the souls of sheep and cows