pathetic, and the Mayor and his sojers comin' out pink and going back
jammed to the colour of canned salmon, my feelin's is worked up to
bust. What makes a man act so? It must be he has cats in him."

He pulled his moustache and looked gloomy, and I judged his remorse
was sincere. I says:

"That's what I don't put together. Why, Kid, look here! If you feel
as bad as that three-for-a-cent requiem to Pete Hillary sounded, it's
cats all right. It's the same kind that light on back fences and feel
sick, and express themselves by clawing faces," I says, "and
blaspheming the moon with sounds that never ought to be. That what
you mean by 'cats in him'?"

"Precise, Tommy, precise."

"Well, I don't put it together," I says. "I wouldn't feel like that
for the satisfaction of drowning all Ferdinand Street. Why, poetical
habits and habits of banging folks don't seem to me to fit. Why," I
says, "a poet he's one thing, and a scrapper he's another, ain't
they? They don't agree. One of 'em feels bad about it, and takes to
laments and requiems nights, same as malaria."

"It's this way," he says. "Those are just two different ways of
statin' that things are interestin'. And yet, you're not far from the
facts. It was a shoemaker in Portland, Maine," he says, "that taught
me to chuck metres when I was a young one, and the shoemaker's son
taught me to fight in the back yard, more because he was bigger than
because he was interested in educatin' me. By-and-by I beat the
shoemaker on metres and the son in the back yard, and then I left