Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/25

 "The papers is got nothin' on me," I says, gettin' up. "I'm full of him too! So long!"

But he calls me back, and in about twenty minutes I have got the low down on Monsieur Kane Halliday.

This guy had been committed to college with the idea that when he come out he'd be at the very least a civil engineer, though most of the engineers I know learned their trade in a and yard and was civil enough as far as that part of it goes. Halliday's people was supposed to have a dollar for every egg in a shad roe, and the boy treated the civil engineer thing as a practical joke and college as somethin' he had been gave for Christmas to play with. The principal studies he devoted his time and attention to was football, wrestlin', runnin', dancin', boxin', playin' saxophone in the Glee Club and poker in the others. He won more gold and silver cups than the Crown Prince lifted from Belgium, was the most popular guy that ever wore a "Y" on his sweater, and as a reward he fin'ly got throwed outa dear old Yale on his ear without even a reference, let alone a diploma, because he had a prejudice against enterin' a classroom. He hit the cruel world about the same time Germany did, and he played with the Allies as a dizzy aviator.

When he come back he was greeted with the delightful information that his old man had gone broke on the war, and it was up to him to make the acquaintance of Manual Labor, provided he wished to continue his daily consumption of proteins and calories, as they wittily refer to food in Battle Creek. Instead of goin' down to the drug store and quaffin' off a beaker of