The bartender nodded back. "Or liver," said he, setting out the red
bottle. "Have a smile."
"No, I don't want any more of that damned stuff. A man's a fool to let
it get away with him, and sometimes I figure I better watch out--not
but what I can't control myself, y'understand." There was the
slightest interrogation in his tone.
"Sure y'can, Jim; I know that. Still," dubiously, "like you say, a
fellow ought to watch out. It'll land the K.O. on the stoutest lad in
shoes, if he keeps a-fightin' it."
"It's for use and not abuse. Ain't I right?"
The bartender conspicuously helped himself to a swallow of lithia.
"Yep, sure," he said. "D'you know, Jim, I'm kind of sorry you didn't
go home to supper to-night."
"So'm I, but I got to talking----"
"Why don't you go now?"
"Too blue, Jack, and home is fierce when I get there with a breath."
"Remember the time the little woman come here after you?"
"Oh, it's no use bringing that up now," said Jim sadly. "She liked me
then. Give me a ginger ale."
Jim took his glass and sat alone at a round table by the wall, under
the painting of Pasiphae and The Shower of Gold. This saloon, like
many others, in Chicago, ran to classical subjects.
Jim relit his cigar and slowly turned the pages of a Fliegende Blätter,
looking at the pictures and habitually picking out those letters in the
text which resembled English letters. It was a frayed copy which had
inhabited the saloon for many months, and showed it. Jim had thumbed
it twenty times before, but he was doing it again to appease his
subconsciousness, to give himself the appearance of activity of some
sort.
But he was looking through the German pages to the years behind him.
Politics--maybe that was the trouble. Politicians, at least little
fellows like him, got more feathers than chicken out of it. If he
hadn't quit that job with the railroad--but no, they were drivers, and
there was no future in the railroad business for a fellow like him, a
bookkeeper. He might have stayed there all his life and not thirty men
in the entire offices have been the wiser, or have ever heard of him.
In fact, he had bettered himself by going with the publishing firm. He
seemed to have prospects there. It wasn't his fault they blew up and
he was out on the street again. That was how he got into
politics--sort of drifted in after meeting the big fellow canvassing
the saloons one night, when he, Jim, had nothing else to do.
The big fellow was so attractive, so sure of himself, and Jim would
have seemed a fool if he had refused the offer to clerk in an election
precinct that fall. There was a little money in it, and a little
importance.
The big fellow had asked him to please see what he could do for the
ticket that fall, and of course he had. It was agreeable to be
consulted by the famous Ed Miles about plans and all that. He had
never been consulted in the railroad office, or even by those
publishers.
After election, without solicitation, Miles had Jim appointed a deputy
sheriff for the State of Illinois, County of Cook, ss. Of course, he
took it. There was nothing else in sight just then. The pay was fair,
the hours good, and besides, there was no time-clock to punch and no
superintendent always hovering about.
After a time the big fellow told Jim pleasantly, but firmly, that his
job had to be passed around to some of the other boys, and Jim
resigned. But the big fellow let it be known that Jim was still a
trusted scout. That was an asset. The landlord knocked something off
the rent of his flat, the street car company gave him a book of
tickets, one of the bill-board companies sent him a nice check for
Christmas; but he had done some rather particular work for them. He
had respectable charge accounts in several places and wasn't pressed.
But, after all, one cannot get rich on that sort of thing; so when the
child died, his wife went back downtown as a stenographer in a life
insurance office. She had been a stenographer before their marriage.