lmost as long and sad as a cow's. Much too long for his
body and legs as he was only medium height up as far as the chin. Kind
of a stoop shouldered, hollow chested, thin shanked party, too.
Somewhere in the fifties, I should judge, but he might have been sixty
by his looks and the weary way he dragged around.

When I first knew him he was assistant engineer in the Corrugated
buildin' and I used to see him risin' solemn out of the sidewalk on the
ash elevator, comin' up from the basement like some sad, flour-sprinkled
ghost. And then before he'd roll off the ash cans he'd lean his elbows
on the safety bar and stare mournful up and down Broadway for a spell,
just stallin' around. Course, I got to kiddin' him, askin' what he found
so comic in the boiler-room and why he didn't let me in on the joke.

"Huh!" he'd grunt. "If there's any joke down there, young feller, I'm
it. I wonder how much grinnin' you'd do if you had to slave ten hours a
day in a hole like that. I ought to be up sittin' on the right side of
an engine cab, fast freight, and drawin' my three hundred a month with
time and a half overtime. That's what I set out to be when I started as
wiper. Got to be fireman once, but on the second run we hit a weak rail
and went into the ditch. Three busted ribs and my hospital expenses was
all I pulled out of that with; and when I tried to get damages they put
my name on the blacklist, which finished my railroadin' career for good.
Maybe it was just as well. Likely I'd got mashed fair in the next wreck.
That's me. Why say, if it was rainin' soup I'd be caught out with a
fork."

Yes, he was some consistent gloom hound, Henry Gummidge. Let him tell it
and what Job went through was a mere head-cold compared to his trials
and tribulations. And the worst was yet to come. He knew it because he
often dreamed of seeing a bright yellow dog walkin' on his hind legs
proud and wearin' a shiny collar. And then the dog would change into a
bow-legged policeman swingin' a night-stick threatenin'. All of which a
barber friend of Henry's told him meant trouble in the pot and that he
must beware of a false friend who came across the water. The barber got
it straight from a dream book, and there must be something in it, for
hadn't Henry been done out of $3 by a smooth talkin' guy from Staten
Island?

Well, sure enough, things did happen to Gummidge. He had a case of
shingles. Then he dropped the silver watch he'd carried for fifteen
year