out in the dormitory one night, and in the darkness pulled three or
four men out of the bunks, cuffed them on the side of the head and
kicked them around generally. He thought this was the finishing touch
to my vigil. When the superintendent came up and lit the lamp again,
he had an idea that it was the bouncer and came over to his cot, which
was beside mine, and found him snoring. When all was quiet, the
bouncer said to me:

"What did ye tink of it, boss, hey?"

"Oh," I said, "that was a very tame show, and utterly uninteresting."

"Gee!" he said, "you must have been a barker at Coney Island."

The test of my theology on him proved a failure. The story of the
prodigal son was a great joke to him. He said of it:

"Say, bub, if you ever strike an old gazabo as soft as dat one, lemme
know, will ye?" Prayer to him was "talking through one's hat."

In a few weeks he straightened up and began to give me very fine
assistance in the bunk-house. His change of mind and heart almost lost
him his job, for he lost a good deal of his brutality--the thing that
fitted him for his work. In ushering insubordinate gentlemen
downstairs, he did it more with force of persuasion than with the
force of his shoe. He continued my campaign of cleaning, and decorated
the kalsomined walls with chromos that he bought at one penny apiece.
He was a psychologist and would have probably been surprised if
anybody had told him so. He could tell at once the moral worth of a
lodger; so he was a very good lieutenant and picked out the best of