By steerage he made his way to America ... to Chicago ... all his works of art, his priceless manuscripts sold ... the money gone like water through the assiduities of false friends and sycophants....

On the bum in Chicago ... a hotel clerk, discharged as incompetent—­he had forgotten to insist that a man and woman register always as man and wife ... “because it was such hypocrisy” ... finally a dishwasher, who lived in a hall bed-room ... no friends because of his abstractedness, his immersion in oriental scholarship ... his only place of refuge, his dwelling place, when not washing dishes for a mere existence, the Public Library....

“Old Pfeiler” drank coffee by the quart, as drunkards drink whiskey.  He had a nervous affliction which caused him to shake his head continually, as if in impatience ... or as a dog shakes his head to dislodge something that has crept into his ear....

He was as timid as a girl....

The common dormitory was no place for him ...  I am sorry to confess that, for a while, I helped to make his life miserable for him ... each night the beak-nosed pugilist-lad and I raised a merry roughhouse in the place....  Pfeiler was our chief butt.  We put things in his bed ... threw objects about so they would wake him up.  One night I found him crying silently ... but somehow not ignobly ... this made me shift about in my actions toward him, and see how miserable my conduct had been....

So the next time “Beak-horn,” as I called my plug-ugly friend, started to tease the old man, I asked him to stop ... that we had tormented Pfeiler long enough.  “Beak-horn” replied with a surprised, savage stare ... and the next moment he was on me, half in jest, half in earnest.  I boxed with him as hard and swift as I was able ... but a flock of fists drove in over me ... and I was thrown prone across the form of the old man ... who stuttered with fright and impotent rage, swearing it was all a put-up game between us to torment him further, when I protested that I had not tried to do it.

* * * * *

The next morning Spalton sent for me.

“Look here, Razorre, if you were not the biggest freak of them all, I could understand,” he remarked severely....

I tried to explain how sorry I was for the way I had joined in Pfeiler’s persecution ... but the master would have none of it ... he told me to look better to my conduct or he would have to expel me from the community....

“Gregory,” he ended, calling me by my name, “somehow I never quite get you ... most of the time you are refined and almost over-gentle ... you know and love poetry and art and the worthwhile things ... but then there’s also the hoodlum in you ... the dirty Hooligan—­” his eyes blazed with just rebuke....  I trod out silently, sick of myself, at heart ... as I have often, often been.

* * * * *