advantage of the education of the New York clubs, you are strangely
young. Let me see, you are nineteen or twenty now--yes. Well, that
perhaps accounts for it. It 's a pity you were n't born older. It 's a
pity most 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