Some one jostled him in the side. He turned his head, and when he looked back again his double eagle mysteriously had vanished, and the barkeeper was motioning him to depart.
He protested, naturally. Whereupon the barkeeper reached for the bung starter, swung it with a skill born of long practice, and struck him squarely between the eyes. A moment later the ex-sandwich man found himself sprawling on the sidewalk, his happy visions gone forever.
A prey to melancholy, filled with deep disappointments and a yet deeper sense of injustice, he got upon his feet and started to limp away.
Next door to the saloon was a basement barber shop. From it at this instant there emerged a Bowery mission worker, an elderly gentleman of a benevolent aspect, his pink jowls newly scraped and his face powdered. As he climbed up the steps to the level of the sidewalk this gentleman bent over to refasten a loosened shoelace.
Now, to the best of his knowledge and belief, the derelict never before had seen the missionary, but as the latter stooped, presenting before him an expanse of black coat tails, the misanthrope hauled off and dealt the gentle stranger a terrific kick.
With a yell of astonishment and pain the clergyman landed ten feet away.
“What did you mean by that?” he demanded, rubbing the seat of his trousers with both hands. “Why did you kick me?”
“Oh,” said the ex-sandwich man, in tones of an uncontrollable annoyance, “you’re always tying your shoestring!”
§ 46 The Custom of the Country
The English have the credit for being a conservative race—a breed in which respect for traditions is so strong that they hesitate to change anything which has behind it the merits of antiquity and established comfort. The story which follows would tend to indicate that this trait really does persist in our Anglo-Saxon cousins.