The American Claimant

get reconciled to the absence of it. There is respect, there is deference here, but it doesn’t fall to my share. It is lavished on two men. One of them is a portly man of middle age who is a retired plumber. Everybody is pleased to have that man’s no­tice. He’s full of pomp and circumstance and self complacency and bad grammar, and at table he is Sir Oracle and when he opens his mouth not any dog in the kennel barks. The other person is a policeman at the capitol-building. He represents the government. The deference paid to these two men is not so very far short of that paid to an earl in England, though the method of it differs. Not so much courtliness, but the def­erence is all there.

Yes, and there is obsequiousness, too.

istocracy of position here, and an aristocracy of prosperity, and apparently there is also an aristocracy of the ins as opposed to the outs, and I am with the outs. So the ranks grow daily, here. Plainly there are all kinds of castes here and only one that I be­long to, the outcasts.” But he couldn’t even smile at his small joke, although he was obliged to confess that he had a rather good opinion of it. He was feeling so defeated and miserable by this time that he could no longer look with philosophical complacency on the horseplay of the young fellows in the up­per rooms at night. At fi rst it had been pleasant to see them unbend and have a good time after having so well earned it by the labors of the day, but now it all rasped upon his feelings and his dignity. He lost patience with the spectacle. When they were feeling good, they shouted, they scuffl ed, they sang songs, they romped about the place like cattle, and they generally wound up with a pillow fi ght, in which they banged each other over the head, and threw the pillows in all directions, and ev­ery now and then he got a buffet himself; and they were always inviting him to join in. They called him “Johnny Bull,” and invited him with excessive familiarity to take a hand. At fi rst he had endured all this with good nature, but latterly he had shown by his manner that it was distinctly distasteful to him, and very soon he saw a change in the manner of these young people toward him. They were souring on him as they would have expressed it in their language. He had never been what might be called popular. That was hardly the phrase for it; he had merely been liked, but now dislike for him was growing. His case was not helped by the fact that he was out of luck, couldn’t get work, didn’t belong to a union, and couldn’t gain

ently purposeless way. But presently they fell to dropping re­marks that were evidently aimed at Tracy, and some of them at the tinner. The ringleader of this little mob was a short-haired bully and amateur prize-fi ghter named Allen, who was accus­tomed to lording it over the upper fl oor, and had more than once shown a disposition to make trouble with Tracy. Now there was an occasional cat-call, and hootings, and whistlings, and fi nally the diversion of an exchange of connected remarks was introduced:

“Why?”

In a little while he should be out of money, and then what should he do? He wished, now, that he had borrowed a lit­tle more liberally from that stranger’s store. He found it im­possible to sleep. A single torturing, terrifying thought went racking round and round in his head, wearing a groove in his brain: What should he do – What was to become of him? And along with it began to intrude a something presently which was very like a wish that he had not joined the great and noble ranks of martyrdom, but had stayed at home and been con­tent to be merely an earl and nothing better, with nothing more to do in this world of a useful sort than an earl fi nds to do. But he smothered that part of his thought as well as he could; he made every effort to drive it away, and with fair success, but he couldn’t keep it from intruding a little now and then, and when it intruded it came suddenly and nipped him like a bite, a sting, a burn. He recognized that thought by the peculiar sharpness of its pang. The others were painful enough, but that one cut to the quick when it came. Night after night he lay tossing to the music of the hideous snor­ing of the honest bread-winners until two and three o’clock in the morning, then got up and took refuge on the roof, where he sometimes got a nap and sometimes failed entirely. His ap­petite was leaving him and the zest of life was going along with it. Finally, one day, being near the imminent verge of to­tal discouragement, he said to himself – and took occasion to blush privately when he said it, “If my father knew what my American name is, – he – well, my duty to my father rather requires that I furnish him my name. I have no right to make his days and nights unhappy, I can do enough unhappiness