y, followed me to the coat-room, took my coat
away from the servant and helped me with it. "I want to see you the
first thing in the morning, Harvey," said he.

"I'll call you up, if I have time," said I.

We came out of the cloak-room, his arm linked in mine, and crossed the
corner of the dining-room toward the outside door. Jamieson threw up his
arm and fluttered his hand in an impertinent gesture of farewell. "So
long, Senator Swollenhead," he cried in a thick voice. "We'll teach you
a lesson in how to treat gentlemen."

The last word--gentlemen--was just clearing his mouth when Dominick's
tea-pot, flung with all the force of the ex-prize-fighter's big muscles
and big body, landed in the midst of his broad white shirt-bosom. And
with the tea-pot Dominick hurled his favorite epithet from his garbage
barrel of language. With a yell Jamieson crashed over backward; his
flying legs, caught by the table, tilted it; his convulsive kicks sent
it over, and half the diners, including Dominick, were floored under it.

All this in a snap of the fingers. And with the disappearance of the
physical semblance of a company of civilized men engaged in dining in
civilized fashion, the last thin veneer over hate and fury was scraped
away. Curses and growling roars made a repulsive mess of sound over that
repulsive mess of unmasked, half-drunken, wholly infuriated brutes.
There is shrewd, sly wisdom snugly tucked away under the fable of the
cat changed into a queen and how she sprang from her throne at sight of
a mouse to pursue it on all fours. The best of us are, after all,
animals changed into men by the spell of reason; and in some
circumstances, it doesn't take much of a blow to dissolve that spell.

For those men in those circumstances, that blow proved sufficient.
Partridge extricated himself, ran round the table and kicked Jamieson in
the head--partly in punishment, perhaps, and because he needed just that
vent for his rage, but chiefly to get credit with me, for he glanced
toward me as he did it. Men, sprawling and squirming side by side on the
floor, lashed out with feet and fists, striking each other and adding to
the wild dishevelment. The candles set fire to the table-cloth and
before the blaze was extinguished burned several in the hair and
mustaches.

Dominick, roaring with laughter, came to Roebuck and me standing at the
door, both dazed at this magic shift of a "gentlemen's" dinner into a
bear-pit. "Granby's ghost