own also by
the names of "McBriarty" and "Brady." He had been in the army, but
they could not drill him. He had spent fifteen years in State's Prison
for various offences, but for a good many years he had been bungling
around in cheap lodging houses, getting a living by his wits. He was
the toughest specimen of a man I ever saw. There was a challenge in
him which I at once accepted. It was in his looks and in his words. It
was an intimation that he was master--that missionaries were somewhat
feeble-minded and had to do with weak people. I was not very well
acquainted with the bunk-house at the time, but I outlined a plan of
campaign the major part of which was the capture of this primordial
man. Could I reach him? Could I influence and move him to a better
life? If not, what was the use of trying my theological programme on
others? So I abandoned myself to the task. I knew my friends and the
officers of the missionary society would have considered it very
ill-advised if the details of the plan had been known to them, so I
slept in the bunk-house and stayed with him night and day. Of course,
I would not have done it if I had not seen beyond him: that if I could
gain this man, I would gain a strategic point. He himself would be a
great power in the bunk-house; first of all, because he was physically
fit. He was selected because he could pitch any two men in the house
out of it; and even from a missionary's point of view, that was
important. He resented at first my interference, but gentleness and
love prevailed, and he finally acquiesced.

The hardest part of the plan was to eat with him in an underground
restaurant where meals cost five and ten cents a piece. When he was
"tapering off," I went with him into the saloons. He visited the cheap
fake auction-rooms and would buy little pieces of cheap jewelry
occasionally and sell them at a few cents' profit. These things
nauseated me. There was no hope of finding this man any work. He did
not want work, anyway; could not work if he had it.

He tried, during the first week that I was with him, to disgust me;
first with his language and then with his actions. He put the lights
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