indeer to cook supper.

So around Spider and I went to the St. Louis House--my first visit--a
huge bar-room, where perhaps fifty men, mostly longshoremen, were
congregated. And there I met Soup Kennedy for the second time, and Bill
Kelley. And Smith, of the Annie, drifted in--he of the belt-buckled
revolvers. And Nelson showed up. And I met others, including the Vigy
brothers, who ran the place, and, chiefest of all, Joe Goose, with the
wicked eyes, the twisted nose, and the flowered vest, who played the
harmonica like a roystering angel and went on the most atrocious tears
that even the Oakland water-front could conceive of and admire.

As I bought drinks--others treated as well--the thought flickered across
my mind that Mammy Jennie wasn't going to be repaid much on her loan out
of that week's earnings of the Razzle Dazzle. "But what of it?" I
thought, or rather, John Barleycorn thought it for me. "You're a man and
you're getting acquainted with men. Mammy Jennie doesn't need the money
as promptly as all that. She isn't starving. You know that. She's got
other money in the bank. Let her wait, and pay her back gradually."

And thus it was I learned another trait of John Barleycorn. He inhibits
morality. Wrong conduct that it is impossible for one to do sober, is
done quite easily when one is not sober. In fact, it is the only thing
one can do, for John Barleycorn's inhibition rises like a wall between
one's immediate desires and long-learned morality.

I dismissed my thought of debt to Mammy Jennie and proceeded to get
acquainted at the trifling expense of some trifling money and a jingle
that was growing unpleasant. Who took me on board and put me to bed that
night I do not know, but I imagine it must have been Spider.

CHAPTER X

And so I won my manhood's spurs. My status on the water-front and with
the oyster pirates became immediately excellent. I was looked upon as a
good fellow, as well as no coward. And somehow, from the day I achieved
that concept sitting on the stringer-piece of the Oakland City Wharf, I
have never cared much for money. No one has ever considered me a miser
since, while my carelessness of money is a source of anxiety and worry to
some that know me.

So completely did I break with my parsimonious past that I sent word home
to my mother to call in the boys of the neighbourhood and give to them
all my collections. I never even cared to learn what boys got what
c