"M-m-m-n not me. And I never did. Any man, of course, likes the
excitement once he's into it, but what man enjoys smashing another man
in the face? What fights I've been into I couldn't side-step--not
without crawling, I mean. No, no, I wouldn't make good on your job. I'd
go along all right in your office back in New York for awhile,--for a
month, two months, six months,--who knows, maybe a year, and then one
day I'd look out the window, take a look down on the Battery, say at the
elevated railroad or the Aquarium Building, and the Coney Island steamer
dock with the barkers yelling and gesturing, and the loafers on the
benches in between, and from that I'd look down the bay and see the
Statue of Liberty--some morning that would be, maybe, when the sun was
lighting up New York Bay as it does some mornings, or maybe it would be
on a late afternoon, with the sun setting over on the Jersey shore, the
dark smoke from a hundred chimneys smooching across the pink and purple
of it, and, if 'twas summer, a haze like a bridal veil over it all, and
between that and the Battery the life of a hundred craft--ferry-boats,
tow-boats, lighters, windjammers, steam-yachts, ocean-liners, harbor,
coastwise and foreign bound, a hundred different kinds coming and going,
the Lord knows where, but to where no four walls will bound 'em for a
time, be sure of that. And if ever I did look and looked long enough, be
sure the earth would look like it was rolling by too slow and I'd want
to get out and give it a push to speed it up. No, no. That"--he looked
up at the serene blue--"for my ceiling. And that"--he pointed to the
dimpling green sea--"for my office floor. And that"--he waved a hand to
space--"for a window. And let all the bruising bosuns and bucko ship's
officers afloat jump on me, but give me that and I'll take a chance.
And--"

He stopped short and sighed. "I do get going sometimes, don't I?" He