“You didn’t start from the gutter, anyway,” remarked Bonny, “for you talk like a gentleman.”
“You’re right, young man. I can talk the slang of the road. I’ve been broken to it, but I won’t waste it on you, for you wouldn’t understand it—well, my first push downward was given me by my mother.”
“Your mother?” echoed Bonny, in disgust.
“Yes, young sir—one of the best women that ever lived. She held me out to the devil, when she allowed me to kick the cat because it had made me fall.”
“Nonsense,” said Bonny, sharply.
“Not nonsense, but sound sense, sir. That was the beginning of the lack of self-restraint. Did I want her best cap to tear to ribbons? I got it.”
“Oh, get out,” interposed Tom, crossly. “You needn’t tell us that all spoiled children go to the bad.”
“Good London, no,” said the man, with a laugh. “Look at our millionaires. Could you find on the face of the earth a more absolute autocrat, a more heartless, up-to-date, determined-to-have-his-own-way, let-the-rest-of-you-go-to-the-dogs kind of a man, than the average American millionaire?”
The two young men eyed each other, and Bonny murmured, “You are an extremist.”
“It began away back,” continued the tramp, now thoroughly roused from his sleepy condition. “When our forefathers came from England, they brought that ugly, I’m-going-to-have-my-own-way spirit with them. Talk about the severity of England precipitating the Revolution. If they hadn’t made a revolution for us, we’d made one to order. Did you ever read about the levelling spirit of those days? I tell you this American nation is queer—it’s harder for a real, true blue son of the soil to keep straight, than it is for the son of any other nation under the heaven. We lack self-restraint. We’ll go to the bad if we want to, and none shall hinder us.”