ost men are n't. They would n't have to take so much time and lose
so many good things learning. Now, Mr. Hamilton, let me tell you, and
you will pardon me for it, that you are a fool. Your case is n't half as
bad as that of nine-tenths of the fellows that hang around here. Now,
for instance, my father was hung."

Joe started and gave a gasp of horror.

"Oh, yes, but it was done with a very good rope and by the best citizens
of Texas, so it seems that I really ought to be very grateful to them
for the distinction they conferred upon my family, but I am not. I am
ungratefully sad. A man must be very high or very low to take the
sensible view of life that keeps him from being sad. I must confess that
I have aspired to the depths without ever being fully able to reach
them.

"Now look around a bit. See that little girl over there? That 's Viola.
Two years ago she wrenched up an iron stool from the floor of a
lunch-room, and killed another woman with it. She 's nineteen,--just
about your age, by the way. Well, she had friends with a certain amount
of pull. She got out of it, and no one thinks the worse of Viola. You
see, Hamilton, in this life we are all suffering from fever, and no one
edges away from the other because he finds him a little warm. It 's
dangerous when you 're not used to it; but once you go through the
parching process, you become inoculated against further contagion. Now,
there 's Barney over there, as decent a fellow as I know; but he has
been indicted twice for pocket-picking. A half-dozen fellows whom you
meet here every night have killed their man. Others have done worse
things for which you respect them less. Poor Wallace, who is just coming
in, and who looks like a jaunty ragpicker, came here about six months
ago with about two thousand dollars, the proceeds from the sale of a
house his father had left him. He 'll sleep in one of the club chairs
to-night, and not from choice. He spent his two thousand learning. But,
after all, it was a good investment. It was like buying an annuity. He
begins to know already how to live on others as they have lived on him.
The plucked bird's beak is sharpened for other's feathers. From now on
Wallace will live, eat, drink, and sleep at the expense of others, and
will forget to mourn his lost money. He will go on this way until,
broken and useless, the poor-house or the potter's field gets him. Oh,
it 's a fine, rich life, my lad. I know you 'll like it. I said you