to tell Mary which
were of great interest to both of them. For in his place of business
he had both friends and enemies of whom he was able to speak with the
fluency which was their due. Mary knew, for instance, that the chief
was bald but decent (she could not believe that the connection was
natural), and that the second in command had neither virtues nor
whiskers. (She saw him as a codfish with a malignant eye.) He
epitomized the vices which belonged in detail to the world, but were
peculiar to himself in bulk. (He must be hairy in that event.)
Language, even the young man's, could not describe him adequately. (He
ate boys for breakfast and girls for tea.) With this person the young
man was in eternal conflict (a bear with little ears and big teeth);
not open conflict, for that would have meant instant dismissal (not
hairy at all--a long slimy eel with a lot of sense), but a veiled
unremitting warfare which occupied all their spare attention. The
young man knew for an actual fact that some day he would be compelled
to hit that chap, and it would be a sorry day for the fellow, because
his ability to hit was startling. He told Mary of the evil results
which had followed some of his blows, and Mary's incredulity was only
heightened by a display of the young man's muscles. She extolled these
because she thought it was her duty to do so, but preserved some
doubts of their unique destructiveness. Once she asked him could he
fight a policeman, and he assured her that policemen are not able to
fight at all singly, but only in squads, when their warfare is callous
and ugly and conducted mainly with their boots; so that decent people
have no respect for their fighting qualities or their private
characters. He assured her that not only could he fight a policeman,
but he could also tyrannize over the seed, breed and generation of
such a one, and, moreover, he could accomplish this without real
exertion. Against all policemen and soldiers the young man professed
an eager hostility, and with these bad people he included landlords
and many employers of labor. His denunciation of these folk might be
traced back to the belief that none of them treated one fairly. A
policeman, he averred, would arrest a man for next door to nothing,
and any resistance offered to their spleen rendered the unfortunate
prisoner liable to be man-handled in his cell until their outraged
dignity was appeased. The three capital crimes upon which a man is
liab