Then Tracy declined to punish him
further and the fight was at an end. Allen was carried off by some of
his friends in a very much humbled condition, his face black and blue and
bleeding, and Tracy was at once surrounded by the young fellows, who
congratulated him, and told him that he had done the whole house a
service, and that from this out Mr. Allen would be a little more
particular about how he handled slights and insults and maltreatment
around amongst the boarders.
Tracy was a hero now, and exceedingly popular. Perhaps nobody had ever
been quite so popular on that upper floor before. But if being
discountenanced by these young fellows had been hard to bear, their
lavish commendations and approval and hero-worship was harder still to
endure. He felt degraded, but he did not allow himself to analyze the
reasons why, too closely. He was content to satisfy himself with the
suggestion that he looked upon himself as degraded by the public
spectacle which he had made of himself, fighting on a tin roof, for the
delectation of everybody a block or two around. But he wasn't entirely
satisfied with that explanation of it. Once he went a little too far and
wrote in his diary that his case was worse than that of the prodigal son.
Pages:
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143