epithet "ham" is about as mean a one as can be applied to an
operator, and I came back at him with:

"Look here, you infernal idiot, I'll meet you some time and when I do
I'm going to smash your face. Stop your monkeying and take these
messages."

"Hold your horses, sonny, what's the difference between you and a
jackass?" he said.

"Just nine hundred miles," I replied.

Further words were useless and in a few minutes he was relieved, but
just about the time he got up he said:

"Say, 'BY,' don't forget you've got a contract to smash my face some of
these days. I'll be expecting you. Ta Ta."

That was the last of him on that wire and the incident passed from my
mind. I pulled up and left St. Louis shortly after that and went to work
for the old Baltimore and Ohio Commercial Company, at the corner of
Broadway and Canal streets, in New York. I drew a prize in the shape of
the common side of the first Boston quad. Sitting right alongside of me
was a great, big, handsome Irish chap named Dick Stanley. He was as fine
a fellow as ever lived, and that night took me over to his house on
Long Island to board. We were sitting in his room about nine-thirty,
having a farewell smoke before retiring and our conversation turned to
"shop talk." We talked of the old timers we had both known, told
reminiscences, spun yarns, and all at once Dick said:

"Say, Bates, did you ever work in 'A' office in St. Louis?"

"Oh! yes," I replied, "I put in three months there under 'Old Top.' In
fact, I came from there to New York."

"That so?" he answered. "I used to work on the polar side of the No. 2
quad, from this end, over in the Western Union office on Broadway and
Dey street. What did you sign there?"

"BY," I answered. I thought he looked queer, but we continued our talk,
and finally I told him of my wordy war with a man in New York, who
signed "SY," and remarked that I was going over to 195 Broadway, and
size him up some day. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, got up from
his chair, and, stretching his six feet two of anatomy to its full
length said:

"Well, old chap, I'm fagged. I'm going to bed. You'd better get a good
sleep and be thoroughly rested in the morning, because you'll need all
your strength. I'm the man that signed 'SY' in the New York office, and
I'm ready to take that licking."

[Illustration: "He looked at me ... then catching me by the collar...."]

Did I lick him? Not much, I couldn't have licked one side