enough--reg'lar Elbert Hubbard thatch he was
wearin', all fluffy and wavy, and just clearin' his coat collar. That
and the artist's necktie, not to mention the eye glasses with the
tortoise shell rims, put him in the self advertisin' class without his
sayin' a word.

Outside of the frills, he wa'n't a bad lookin' chap, and sizable enough
for a 'longshoreman, only you could tell by the lily white hands and
the long fingernails that him and toil never got within speakin'
distance.

"Wonder what particular brand of mollycoddle he is?" thinks I.

Now there wa'n't any call for me to put him through the catechism, just
because he was headed for the same town I was; but somehow I had an
itch to take a rise out of him. So I leans over and gets a peek at the
book.

"Readin' po'try, eh?" says I, swallowin' a grin.

"Beg pardon?" says he, kind of shakin' himself together. "Yes, this is
poetry--Swinburne, you know," and he slumps down again as if he'd said
all there was to say.

But when I starts out to be sociable you can't head me off that way.
"Like it?" says I.

"Why, yes," says he, "very much, indeed. Don't you?"

He thought he had me corked there; but I comes right back at him.
"Nix!" says I. "Swinny's stuff always hit me as bein' kind of punk."

"Really!" says he, liftin' his eyebrows. "Perhaps you have been
unfortunate in your selections. Now take this, from the Anactoria----"

And say, I got what was comin' to me then. He tears off two or three
yards of it, all about moonlight and stars and kissin' and lovin', and
a lot of gush like that. Honest, it would give you an ache under your
vest!

"There!" says he. "Isn't that beautiful imagery?"

"Maybe," says I. "Guess I never happened to light on that part before."

"But surely you are familiar with his Madonna Mia?" says he.

"That got past me too," says I.

"It's here," says he, speakin' up quick. "Wait. Ah, this is it!" and
hanged if he don't give me another dose, with more love in it than you
could get in a bushel of valentines, and about as much sense as if he'd
been readin' the dictionary backwards. He does it well, though, just
as if it all meant something; and me settin' there listenin' until I
felt like I'd been doped.

"Say, I take it all back," says I when he lets up. "That Swinny chap
maybe ain't quite up to Wallace Irwin; but he's got Ella Wheeler pushed
through the ropes. I've got to see a friend in the baggage car,
though, an