in fact, as fast as he could get up he went down again, and the applause

was kept up in liberal fashion from all the neighborhood around.

Finally, Allen had to be helped up. 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.

He said the prodigal son merely fed swine, he didn't have to chum with

them. But he struck that out, and said "All men are equal. I will not

disown my principles. These men are as good as I am."

140

The American Claimant