other sandwich-man was still looking at the window-cleaner on
the fourteenth story across the street. Happening to look down, he saw
coming a man who looked angry. Therefore the sandwich-man meekly stepped
into the gutter, out of the way.

It was the second time within one minute! Hendrik stopped and spoke
peevishly to the meek one in the gutter:

"Why did you move out of my way?"

The sandwich-man looked at him uneasily; then, without answering, walked
away sullenly.

"Here I am," thought Rutgers, "a man without a job; and there he is, a
man with a job and afraid of me!"

Something was wrong--or right. Something always is, to the born fighter.

Who could be afraid of a man without a job but sandwich-men who always
walked along the curb so they could be pushed off into the gutter among
the other beasts? Nobody ever deliberately became a sandwich-man. When
circumstances, the police, hopeless inefficiency, or shattered credit
prevented a hobo from begging, stealing, murdering, or getting drunk, he
became a sandwich-man in order to live until he could rise again.
Whatever a sandwich-man changed himself into, it was always advancement.
Once a sandwich-man, never again a sandwich-man. It was not boards they
carried, but the printed certificates of hopelessness.

Men who could not keep steady jobs became either corpses or
sandwich-men. The sandwich illustrated the tyranny of the regular income
just as the need of a regular income illustrated the need of
Christianity.

The sandwich thus had become the spirit of the times.

The spring-filled system of Hendrik Rutgers began to react for a second
time to a feeling of anger, and this for a second time turned his
thoughts to fighting. To fight was to conquer. There were two ways of
conquering--by fighting with gold and by fighting with brains. Who won
by gold perished by gold. That was why a numismatical bourgeoisie never
fought. Hendrik had no gold. So he would fight with brains. He therefore
would win. Also, he would fight for his fellow-men, which would make his
fight noble. That is called "hedging," for defeat in a noble cause is
something to be proud of in the newspapers. The reason why all hedging
is intelligent is that victory is always Victory when you talk about it.

The sandwich-men were the scum of the earth.

_Ah!_ It was a thrilling thought: To lead men who could no longer fight
for themselves against the world that had marred their immortal souls;
and th