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Samuel became the sort of college student who in the early
nineties drove tandems and coaches and tallyhos between
Princeton and Yale and New York City to show that they
appreciated the social importance of football games. He believed
passionately in good form--his choosing of gloves, his tying of
ties, his holding of reins were imitated by impressionable
freshmen. Outside of his own set he was considered rather a
snob, but as his set was THE set, it never worried him. He
played football in the autumn, drank high-balls in the winter,
and rowed in the spring. Samuel despised all those who were
merely sportsmen without being gentlemen or merely gentlemen
without being sportsmen.
He live in New York and often brought home several of his
friends for the week-end. Those were the days of the horse-car
and in case of a crush it was, of course, the proper thing for
any one of Samuel's set to rise and deliver his seat to a
standing lady with a formal bow. One night in Samuel's junior
year he boarded a car with two of his intimates. There were
three vacant seats. When Samuel sat down he noticed a heavy-eyed
laboring man sitting next to him who smelt objectionably of
garlic, sagged slightly against Samuel and, spreading a little
as a tired man will, took up quite too much room.
The car had gone several blocks when it stopped for a quartet of
young girls, and, of course, the three men of the world sprang
to their feet and proffered their seats with due observance of
form. Unfortunately, the laborer, being unacquainted with the
code of neckties and tallyhos, failed to follow their example,
and one young lady was left at an embarrassed stance. Fourteen
eyes glared reproachfully at the barbarian; seven lips curled
slightly; but the object of scorn stared stolidly into the
foreground in sturdy unconsciousness of his despicable conduct.
Samuel was the most violently affected. He was humiliated that
any male should so conduct himself. He spoke aloud.
"There's a lady standing," he said sternly.
That should have been quite enough, but the object of scorn only
looked up blankly. The standing girl tittered and exchanged
nervous glances with her companions. But Samuel was aroused.
"There's a lady standing," he repeated, rather raspingly. The
man seemed to comprehend.
"I pay my fare," he said quietly.
Samuel turned red and his hands clinched, but the conductor was
looking their way, so at a warning nod from his friends he
subsided into sullen gloom.
They reached their destination and left the car, but so did the
laborer, who followed them, swinging his little pail. Seeing his
chance, Samuel no longer resisted his aristocratic inclination.
He turned around and, launching a full-featured, dime-novel
sneer, made a loud remark about the right of the lower animals
to ride with human beings.
In a half-second the workman had dropped his pail and let fly at
him. Unprepared, Samuel took the blow neatly on the jaw and
sprawled full length into the cobblestone gutter.
"Don't laugh at me!" cried his assailant. "I been workin' all
day. I'm tired as hell!"
As he spoke the sudden anger died out of his eyes and the mask
of weariness dropped again over his face. He turned and picked
up his pail. Samuel's friends took a quick step in his direction.
"Wait!" Samuel had risen slowly and was motioning back. Some
time, somewhere, he had been struck like that before. Then he
remembered--Gilly Hood. In the silence, as he dusted himself
off, the whole scene in the room at Andover was before his eyes--
and he knew intuitively that he had been wrong again. This
man's strength, his rest, was the protection of his family. He
had more use for his seat in the street-car than any young girl.
"It's all right," said Samuel gruffly. "Don't touch 'him. I've
been a damn fool."
Of course it took more than an hour, or a week, for Samuel to
rearrange his ideas on the essential importance of good form. At
first he simply admitted that his wrongness had made him
powerless--as it had made him powerless against Gilly--but
eventually his mistake about the workman influenced his entire
attitude. Snobbishness is, after all, merely good breeding grown
dictatorial; so Samuel's code remained but the necessity of
imposing it upon others had faded out in a certain gutter.
Within that year his class had somehow stopped referring to him
as a snob.
Read next: The Four Fists: Chapter III
Read previous: The Four Fists: Chapter I
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