It is fortunate that I am not sufficiently learned or educated to have an authoritative or deciding voice in the matter, for it will save me from criticism when I become too enthusiastic about my good dumb, soulless brute.
Yet, I wish, pray and hope that he has a soul.
* * * * *
Between First and Houston street, on the Bowery, was a saloon which was known throughout the land as the "hang-out" of the most notorious toughs and crooks in the country. Still, the place was nightly visited by persons called "ladies and gentlemen," representatives, specimens, of the "best" classes of society.
I was employed there as "bouncer." My nightly duty was to suppress trouble of any kind and at all hazards.
The business staff of my employer included a number of gentlemen who were renowned for their deftness of touch, and who, at various and frequent times, had had their photographs taken free of charge at a certain sombre-looking building in Mulberry street.
Their code of ethics—never adopted by the public at large—was most elastic. Still, there were times when they did overreach the limits of Bowery etiquette and then it became my painful duty to rise in righteous indignation and smite them into seeing the error of their ways.
One night a middle-aged man of respectable appearance, evidently the host of a party of "sightseers," got into a quarrel with a member of the mentioned gentry. There was a rumpus of sufficient volume to distract the attention of the other patrons from their most important duty, that of spending their money, and I was forced to take a hand in it.
I quickly ascertained that the "sightseer" and his friends were lavish "spenders," and, with a great display of dramatic effect, I ejected the loafer, who had already become decidedly threatening. That, a few minutes later he found his way back again via the little, ever-handy side door, was a fact not made public.
My stylish "sightseer" had been somewhat sobered by the occurrence and was most effusive in thanking me for having so gallantly rescued him. A lingering sense of shame and realization of his position made him turn homeward, but before leaving he insisted that I should call at his home on the following day to be properly rewarded for having prevented him from falling further into the contumely of contempt.