"I know, Shorty," says Snick, earnest and pleadin'; "but you're my last hope. I've simply got to convince you." "Sorry, Snick," says I; "but this ain't my day for tryin' out barytones. Besides, I got to catch a train." "All right," says Snick. "Then we'll trot along with you while I tell you about Hermy. Honest, Shorty, you've got to hear it!" "If it's as desperate as all that," says I, "spiel away." And of all the plunges I ever knew Snick Butters to make,--and he sure is the dead gamest sport I ever ran across,--this one that he owns up to takin' on Hermy had all his past performances put in the piker class. Accordin' to the way he deals it out, Snick had first discovered Hermy about a year ago, found him doin' the tray balancin' act in a porcelain lined three-off-and-draw-one parlor down on Seventh-ave. He was doin' it bad, too,--gettin' the orders mixed, and spillin' soup on the customers, and passin' out wrong checks, and havin' the boss worked up to the assassination point. But Hermy didn't even know enough to be discouraged. He kept right on singsongin' out his orders down the shaft, as cheerful as you please: "Sausage and mashed, two on the wheats, one piece of punk, and two mince, and let 'em come in a hurry! Silver!" You know how they do it in them C. B. & Q. places? Yes, corned beef and cabbage joints. With sixty or seventy people in a forty by twenty-five room, and the dish washers slammin' crockery regardless, you got to holler out if you want the chef to hear. Hermy wa'n't much on the shout, so he sang his orders. And it was this that gave Snick his pipedream. "Now you know I've done more or less tra-la-la-work myself," says he, "and the season I spent on the road as one of the merry villagers with an Erminie outfit put me wise to a few things. Course, this open air lecturing has spoiled my pipes for fair; but I've got my ear left, haven't I? And say, Shorty, the minute I heard that voice of Hermy's I knew he was the goods." So what does he do but go back later, after the noon rush was over, and get Hermy to tell him the story of his life. It wa'n't what you'd call thrillin'. All there was to it was that Hermy was a double orphan who'd been brought up in Bridgeport, Conn., by an uncle who was a dancin' professor. The only thing that saved Hermy from a bench in the brass works was his knack for poundin' out twosteps and waltzes on the piano; but at that it seems he was such a soft head he couldn't keep from watchin' the girls on the floor and striking wrong notes. Then there was trouble with uncle. Snick didn't get the full details of the row, or what brought it to a head; but anyway Hermy was fired from the academy and fin'lly drifted to New York, where he'd been close up against the bread line ever since.