"Look here, old man, I'm glued to you; night, noon, and day, I'm going
to eat, sleep, loaf, work, and play with you until every shred of your
miserable soul belongs to God."
He laughed loud enough to wake every man in the dormitory.
"Sonny," he said, "I'll give ye three nights, and if ye haven't lost
yer little goat be dat time, I'll set up de drinks fur all hands at
Halloran's."
Then Gar set out to make good in the role of a prophet. At first he
tried to disgust me. He kept up a rapid fire of the most vulgar
profanity. That night he started several fights, and put the light out
in the dormitory. The men, yelling for light, ran about, smashing
every one in their way. When things quieted down, he asked me how I
liked the entertainment. I complained that it was tame.
"Gee!" he said, "youse must 'a' been a barker at Coney!"
I kept him sober for a week; then he went back to his cups, and in a
frenzy he nearly killed a bartender. I found him hiding in a
rag-picker's basement. It appeared that the man had used the name of
Christ in a vile connection, and Gar became a champion of the
Nazarene.
"Hangin'," said Gar, "is too dead easy fur d' sucker what keeps cool
when Jesus's insulted. Dat's d' fust time I ever soaked a guy on
account of religion, an', b'jiminy, I'm tickled t' death over it."
When Gar squared himself again, he began a wholesale house-cleaning in
the bunk-house. He persuaded the management to make several outlays,
and he gave himself to the work. We installed a book-case and books,
and Gar himself selected some chromos to hang around. Over a dent in
the wall, made by a chair with which he had tried to kill a man, he
hung this motto: "Let Brotherly Love Continue."
For ten years Gar struggled to be master of himself. He spent some
years in a soldiers' home, but it was against his principles to die in
such a tame institution. He wound up where he had spent his strange
career--in Chatham Square.
A bunk-house man--old and half blind--was crossing the street, and
roaring down on him came a Third Avenue car. It was Gar's one
opportunity, and, with a spring, he pushed the old fellow on his face
out of danger, but the wheels pinned Gar to the rails.
"I kin tell ye, boys," he said to the few friends who lingered around
his cot at the close, "I'll do no simperin' around God wid hard-luck
stories; I'll take what's comin' an' vamoose to m' place--whether up
or down."
There was a slight pressure of the big hands, then they became limp
and cold.
The bouncer was dead.