"Ah, say!" says he, "I don't see as it's so much worse than others I know of. It's all right when I can get it to lay down in the back. How's that, now?" "Great!" says I. "Couldn't be better if you'd used fish glue." Maybe you never noticed how Swifty's top piece is finished off? He has a mud coloured growth that's as soft as a shoe brush. It behaves well enough when it's dry; but after he's got it good and wet it breaks up into ridges that overlap, same as shingles on a roof. But then, you wouldn't be lookin' for any camel's hair finish on a nut like Swifty's--not with that face. Course, he ain't to blame for the undershot jaw, nor the way his ears lop, nor the width of his smile. We don't all have gifts like that, thanks be! And it wa'n't on purpose Swifty had his nose bent in. That come from not duckin' quick enough when Gans swung with his right. So long as he kept in his class, though, and wa'n't called on to understudy Kyrle Bellew, Swifty met all the specifications. If I was wantin' a parlour ornament, I might shy some at Swifty's style of beauty; but showin' bilious brokers how to handle the medicine ball is a job that don't call for an exchange of photographs. He may have an outline that looks like a map of a stone quarry, and perhaps his ways are a little on the fritz, but Swifty's got good points that I couldn't find bunched again if I was to hunt through a crowd. So, when I find him worryin' over the set of his back hair, I gets interested. "What's the coiffure for, anyway?" says I. "Goin' to see the girl, eh?" Course, that was a josh. You can't look at Swifty and try to think of him doin' the Romeo act without grinnin'. "Ahr, chee!" says he. Now, I've sprung that same jolly on him a good many times; but I never see him work up a colour over it before. Still, the idea of him gettin' kittenish was too much of a strain on the mind for me to follow up. It was the same about his breakin' into song. He'd never done that, either, until one mornin' I hears a noise comin' from the back room that sounds like some one blowin' on a bottle. I steps over to the door easy, and hanged if I didn't make out that it was Swifty takin' a crack at something that might be, "Oh, how I love my Lulu!" "You must," says I, "if it makes you feel as bad as all that. Does Lulu know it?" "Ahr, chee!" says he. Ever hear Swifty shoot that over his shoulder without turnin' his head? Talk about your schools of expression! None of 'em could teach anyone to put as much into two words as Swifty does into them. They're a whole vocabulary, the way he uses 'em. "Was you tryin' to sing," says I, "or just givin' an imitation of a steamboat siren on a foggy night?" But all I could get out of Swifty was another "Ahr, chee!" He was too happy and satisfied to join in any debate, and inside of ten minutes he's at it again; so I lets him spiel away.