“Well, by gum! boys, if I didn’t take God A’mighty at His word. I says to myself, I’ll prove this thing or bust—and if I was to bust there’d be some explosion. When you fellows had kept me here long enough to let me be pretty nigh sure of myself I went and looked up the wife, and—well, there! I needn’t say no more. Some of you dubs has been up to my little place and you know that Whatever spoke to me that day in that back room is in my little tenement in the Bronx if He ever was anywhere—and that brings me at last to my p’int. “I’m speakin’ to you blue-star men because you’ve showed pretty well by this time the stuff you’re made of. As long as you was in danger of slippin’ back I wouldn’t say this to you at all. But, say, you’ve weathered the worst of it, so it’s time for me to speak. “Has any of you a wife? Then go back to her. Have you kids? Then go back to ’em. Have you a father or a mother? Then for God’s sake let them know that you’re doin’ well. Go to ’em—write to ’em—call ’em up on the ’phone—send ’em a telegraph—but don’t let ’em be without the peace o’ mind that’ll come from knowin’ that you’re on your two feet. One of the most mysterious things in this awful mysterious life is the way somebody is always lovin’ somebody. Here in these two rooms is a hundred and sixty-three by actual count of the seediest and most gol-darned boobs that the country can turn out. As we look at each other we can’t help askin’ if any one in their tarnation senses could care for the likes of us. And yet for every bloomin’ one of us you can foot up to eight or ten that’ll have us in their hearts as if we was gold-headed cherubs. “Say, boys, I’ll tell you somethin’ confidential like, and don’t think I’m braggin’. The furniture-movin’ business is the grandest one there is. For a man that’s mastered it there don’t seem anything in the world left for him to learn. He’s ready to command a army or to run a ocean liner. But there’s one thing I’ll be hanged if even a furniture-mover knows anything about—and that’s love. I’ve thought about it and thought about it—and it gets me every time. I don’t know what it is, or where it comes from, or how they brew the durned thing in hearts like yours and mine. All I know is that it’s there—and that this old world goes round in it. I’m buttin’ into it all the time, and it kind o’ turns me shy like. My own little home is so full of it that sometimes it makes me choke. If I try to get away from it and come down here—well, I’m blest if some bloke don’t begin ladlin’ it out to me when he don’t hardly know what he’s doin’. The furniture-movin’ business is that shiny with it when you know how to see it— But I’ll not say no more. You’d laff. You’re laffin’ at me now, and I don’t blame you. All I’ve wanted to do is to put some of you boys wise. If there’s a blue-star man who knows any one in the world that’s fond of him—then for Christ’s sake get after ’em! And do it not later than to-night.”