I could no
more have done differently than a fish could breathe on land or a man
under water. I did as all the others did--and I had the justification of
necessity. Right of might being the prevailing code, when men set upon
me with pistols, I met them with pistols, not with the discarded and
antiquated weapons of sermon and prayer and the law.
And I thought extremely well of myself and of my pistols that June
afternoon, as I was hurrying up town the moment the day's settlement on
'Change was finished. I had sent out my daily letter to investors, and its
tone of confidence was genuine--I knew that hundreds of customers of a
better class would soon be flocking in to take the places of those I had
been compelled to teach a lesson in the vicissitudes of gambling. With a
light heart and the physical feeling of a football player in training, I
sped toward home.
Home! For the first time since I was a squat little slip of a shaver the
word had a personal meaning for me. Perhaps, if the only other home of mine
had been less uninviting, I should not have looked forward with such high
beating of the heart to that cold home Anita was making for me. No, I
withdraw that. It is fellows like me, to whom kindly looks and unsought
attentions are as unfamiliar as flowers to the Arctic--it is men like me
that appreciate and treasure and warm up under the faintest show or shadowy
suggestion of the sunshine of sentiment.
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