which I doubt, but once more
all eyes were shifted to him.) "He doesn't break his word. Within the
limits of his poor little brain he's faithful. He does what he thinks
he's called upon to do.

"But you take a man--more especially a gentleman--one of these fellows
who is always very pointed in emphasizing that he is a gentleman" (which
Blake never did). "Let him inherit eight or ten millions, give him a
college education, let him be socially well connected, and what does he
do? Not a damned thing if he can help it except contract vices--run from
one saloon to another, one gambling house to another, one girl to
another, one meal to another. He doesn't need to know anything
necessarily. He may be the lowest dog physically and in every other way,
and still he's a gentleman--because he has money, wears spats and a high
hat. Why I've seen fifty poor boob prize fighters in my time who could
put it all over most of the so-called gentlemen I have ever seen. They
kept their word. They tried to be physically fit. They tried to stand up
in the world and earn their own living and be somebody." (He was
probably thinking of himself.) "But a gentleman wants to boast of his
past and his family, to tell you that he must go to the city on
business--his lawyers or some directors want to see him. Then he swills
around at hotel bars, stays with some of his lady whores, and then comes
back here and expects me to pull him into shape again, to make his nose
a little less red. He thinks he can use my place to fall back on when he
can't go any longer, to fix him up to do some more swilling later on.

"Well, I want to serve notice on all so-called gentlemen here, and _one
gentleman_ in particular" (and he heavily and sardonically emphasized
the words), "that it won't do. This isn't a hospital attached to a
whorehouse or a saloon. And as for the trashy little six hundred paid
here, I don't need it. I've turned away more men who have been here once
or twice and have shown me that they were just using this place and me
as something to help them go on with their lousy drinking and carousing,
than would fill this building. Sensible men know it. They don't try to
use me. It's only the wastrels, or their mothers or fathers who bring
their boys and husbands and cry, who try to use me, and I take 'em once
or twice, but not oftener. When a man goes out of here cured, I know he
is cured. I never want to see him again. I want him to go out in the
world and