h, Eighteen,' says he. 'Call me Hal--that's short
for halberdier.' 'Oh, don't think I wanted to pry for names,' says
I. 'I know all about the dizzy fall from wealth and greatness. We've
got a count washing dishes in the kitchen; and the third bartender
used to be a Pullman conductor. And they _work_, Sir Percival,' says
I, sarcastic.

"'Eighteen,' says he, 'as a friendly devil in a cabbage-scented
hell, would you mind cutting up this piece of steak for me? I don't
say that it's got more muscle than I have, but--' And then he shows
me the insides of his hands. They was blistered and cut and corned
and swelled up till they looked like a couple of flank steaks
criss-crossed with a knife--the kind the butchers hide and take
home, knowing what is the best.

"'Shoveling coal,' says he, 'and piling bricks and loading drays.
But they gave out, and I had to resign. I was born for a halberdier,
and I've been educated for twenty-four years to fill the position.
Now, quit knocking my profession, and pass along a lot more of
that ham. I'm holding the closing exercises,' says he, 'of a
forty-eight-hour fast.'

"The second night he was on the job he walks down from his corner to
the cigar-case and calls for cigarettes. The customers at the tables
all snicker out loud to show their acquaintance with history. The
boss is on.

"'An'--let's see--oh, yes--'An anachronism,' says the boss.
'Cigarettes was not made at the time when halberdiers was invented.'

"'The ones you sell was,' says Sir Percival. 'Caporal wins from
chronology by the length of a cork tip.' So he gets 'em and lights
one, and puts the box in his brass helmet, and goes back to
patrolling the Rindslosh.

"He made a big hit, 'specially with the ladies. Some of 'em would
poke him with their fingers to see if he was real or only a kind of
a stuffed figure like they burn in elegy. And when he'd move they'd
squeak, and make eyes at him as they went up to the slosh. He looked
fine in his halberdashery. He slept at $2 a week in a hall-room on
Third Avenue. He invited me up there one night. He had a little book
on the washstand that he read instead of shopping in the saloons
after hours. 'I'm on to that,' says I, 'from reading about it in
novels. All the heroes on the bum carry the little book. It's either
Tantalus or Liver or Horace, and its printed in Latin, and you're a
college man. And I wouldn't be surprised,' says I, 'if you wasn't
educated, too.' But it was only the