loungers admired his cleverness and his knowledge of men and cities.
"Why, look a-here," he would cry sometimes, leaning against the bar, with his piratical mustache bristling and his slouch hat raked over one ear. "Look now, what do you swabs know about life, huh? Ever been in Archangel, or London, or Fernando Po, or South Georgia, or Candlemas, or the Tonga Islands, or Noo Caledonia, or Lisbon, or Sitka, or Bombay?" He pounded the bar till the dregs leaped upward in his glass. "No, says you, never a one of 'em! But I have, mind ye, an' more to boot; an' I 've seen men, an' women, too. Aw, hell"—and in a tone of great disgust he would launch into one of his thousand yarns. At the end there would be loud laughter, and more drinks, till his audience forgot this great man's contempt in the flattery of his friendship.
Strangely enough, he was not so unpopular among the orderly people in the village as one might have thought. His loud good nature and bluff willingness to be friends made him tolerated where he was not liked. Then, too,
