"Why, if I'd 'a stuck at not puttin' others before meself I might still 'a been a gasfitter in Liverpool, Eng. That's where I was born. True 'eart-of-oak Englishman I was. Some people thinks they can tell it in the way I talk. Been over 'ere so long, though, seems to me I 'andle the Yankee end of it pretty good. Englishman I met the other day—steward on one of the Cunarders he was—said he wouldn't 'a knowed me from a born New Yorker. Always had a gift for langwidges. Used to know a Frenchman onst; and I'll be 'anged if I wasn't soon parley-vooin' with him till he'd thought I was his mother's son. But it's doin' my dooty by others as has brought me where I am, and I don't make no complaint of it. Job over at the Gansevoort whenever I wants one, which ain't always. Quite a tidy little sum in the savings bank in Brooklyn. Friends as'll stick by me as long as I'll stick by them. And if I hadn't lost me eye—but how was I to know that that low-down butler was a-layin' for me at the silver-pantry door, and' d let me have it anywhere he could 'it me?... And when that eyeball cracked, why, I yelled fit to bring the whole p'lice-force in New York right atop o' me."
Tom was astounded. "But you said you lost your eye saving a young lady's life."
Mr. Honeybun's embarrassment lasted no more than the time needed for finding the right words.
"Oh, did I? Well, that was the other side of it. Yer've heard that there's always two sides to a story, haven't yer? I can't tell yer both sides to onst, now can I?"
He judged it best, however, to revert to the autobiographical. The son of a dock hand in Liverpool, he had been apprenticed to a gasfitter at the age of seventeen.
"But my genius was for somethink bigger. I didn't know just what it'd be, but I could see it ahead o' me, all wuzzy-like. After a bit I come to know it was to fight agin the lor o' proputty. Used to seem to me orful to look around and see that everythink was owned by somebody. Took to goin' to meetin's, I did. Found out that me and me class was the uninherited. 'Gord,' I says to meself then, 'I'll inherit somethink, or I'll bust all Liverpool.' Well, I did inherit somethink—inherited a good warm coat what a guy had left to mark his seat in the Midland Station. Got away with it, too. Knowin' it was mine as much as his, I walks up and throws it over my arm. Ten minutes later I was a-wearin' of it in Lime Street. That was the beginnin', and havin' started in, I begun to inherit quite a lot o' things. 'Nothink's easier,' says I, 'onst you realizes that the soul o' man is free, and that nothink don't belong to nobody.' Fightin' for me class, I was. Tried to make 'em see as they ought to stop bein' the uninherited, and get a move on—and the first thing I know I was landed in Walton jail. You're not asleep, Kiddy, are you?"
Not being asleep, Tom came in for the rest of the narrative. Released from Walton jail, Mr. Honeybun had "made tracks" for America.
"Wanted to git away from a country where everythink was owned, and find the land o' the free. But free! Lord love yer, I hadn't been landed a hour before I see everythink owned over 'ere as much as it is in a back'ard country like old England. Let me tell you this, Kid. Any man that thinks that by comin' to America he'll git somethink for nothink'll find hisself sold. I ain't had nothink except what I've worked for—or collared. Same old lor o' proputty what's always been a injustice to the pore. Had to begin all over agin the same old game of fightin' it. But what's a few months in chokey when you're doin' it for yer feller creeters, to show 'em what their rights is?"
A few nights later Tom was startled by a new point of view as to his position.