r." He was bull-necked, bullet-headed, tall,
round-shouldered, stooped. The story of a hard life was in his
face. He had been in the army, but they couldn't drill him. They
couldn't even get rid of his stoop. He must have looked like a
gorilla with a gun. In the Bismarck, he became the terror of the
lesser breeds--the king by right of conquest.

Gar was a challenge to me, for I saw in him something wild, untamed,
and, perhaps, untamable. I resolved to dispute with my own methods his
mastery of the place. Such was his power over the other men that,
could I only conquer him, the rest would be easy. I concentrated on
Gar.

It was virgin soil. He was ignorant of the vocabulary of religion.
This was the more amazing because he had spent fifteen or twenty years
in prisons. His special difficulty, I found, was intemperance. My
first task was to cure him of that.

One night, as he approached his bunk, he found me stretched out on the
next one.

"Well, I'll be----," he said.

"What's the matter, Gar?"

"Dat's what I ask youse. What's wrong with your machinery? Have ye
been rejooced to the ranks, or has Gawd bounced ye?"

I went up close and whispered in his ear:

"Look here, old man, I'm glued to you; night, noon, and day, I'm going
to eat, sleep, loaf, work, and play with you until every shred of your
miserable soul belongs to God."

He laughed loud enough to wake every man in the dormitory.

"Sonny," he said, "I'll give ye three nights, and if ye haven't lost
yer little goat be dat time, I'll set up de drinks fur all hands at
Halloran's."

Then Gar set out to make good in the role of a prophet. At first he
tried to disgust me. He kept up a rapid fire of the most vulgar
profanity. That night he started several fights, and put the light out
in the dormitory. The men, yelling for light, ran about, smashing
every one in their way. When things quieted down, he asked me how I
liked the entertainment. I complained that it was tame.

"Gee!" he said, "youse must 'a' been a barker at Coney!"

I kept him sober for a week; then he went back to his cups, and in a
frenzy he nearly killed a bartender. I found him hiding in a
rag-picker's basement. It appeared that the man had used the name of
Christ in a vile connection, and Gar became a champion of the
Nazarene.

"Hangin'," said Gar, "is too dead easy fur d' sucker what keeps cool
when Jesus's insulted. Dat's d' fust time I ever soaked a guy on
account of religion, an',