"It's great, ain't it?" he said, at last. "I never knew the

country was like this, an' I don't know that I ever would have

known it if it hadn't been for those poet guys you're always

spouting.

"I always had an idea they was sissy fellows," he went on;

"but a guy can't be a sissy an' think the thoughts they musta

thought to write stuff that sends the blood chasin' through a

feller like he'd had a drink on an empty stomach.

"I used to think everybody was a sissy who wasn't a tough

guy. I was a tough guy all right, an' I was mighty proud of it.

I ain't any more an' haven't been for a long time; but before I

took a tumble to myself I'd have hated you, Bridge. I'd a-hated

your fine talk, an' your poetry, an' the thing about you

that makes you hate to touch a guy for a hand-out.

"I'd a-hated myself if I'd thought that I could ever talk

mushy like I am now. Gee, Bridge, but I was the limit! A

girl--a nice girl--called me a mucker once, an' a coward. I

was both; but I had the reputation of bein' the toughest guy

on the West Side, an' I thought I was a man. I nearly poked

her face for her--think of it, Bridge! I nearly did; but something

stopped me--something held my hand from it, an' lately

I've liked to think that maybe what stopped me was something

in me that had always been there--something decent

that was really a part of me. I hate to think that I was such a

beast at heart as I acted like all my life up to that minute. I

began to change then. It was mighty slow, an' I'm still a

roughneck; but I'm gettin' on. She helped me most, of course,

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