The fourth day was a study in starvation. Dead serious, joshing aside, that was about as happy a time as I ever put in. I forgot that I was hungry, and up against the real thing. I saw myself like some other guy that I had a line on, chasing about ’Frisco in that fix. I myself was warm and comfortable, and having a dreamy sort of a time wandering about. I was strolling down Kearney Street, listening to the birds singing through the haze, when something that wore scrambled whiskers and an ash-barrel hat advised me to go down to Broadway wharf and take a chance with the fruit bums. He steered me the proper course, and I smoked the pipe along Broadway. There was the wharf all right, and there was a whole cargo of bananas being lifted on a derrick and let down. Once in a while one would drop. The crowd underneath would make a jump and fight for it. I stood there wondering if I really wanted any bananas, or if it was worth while to eat, seeing that I’d have to do it again, and was now pretty well broken of the habit, when a big, scaly bunch got loose from the stem and began to shake and shiver. I got under it and made a fair catch, and went through the centre with it the way I used to go through the Yale Freshmen line. There were seventeen bananas, and I ate them all. Next thing, I began to feel thirsty. So I marched up to that Coggswell joke on Ben Franklin, somewhere in the dance-hall district, and foundered myself with water. After that I crawled into a packing-box back of a wood-yard, and for two days I was as sick as Ham, Shem, and Japhet the second day out on the Ark. When I got better I was hungry again. It was bananas or nothing. I found them carting off the cargo, and managed to pick up quite a load in one way or another. After dark I took up two piles and salted them down back of my packing-box. Next day, pretty weak yet, I stayed at home and ate bananas. When the new moon shone like a ripe banana-peel in the heavens of the next night, I never wanted to see a banana as long as I lived. Nathless, me lieges, they were all that I had. After breakfast next morning, I shook my clothes out, hid the sweater, and put on my collar to go downtown. On the way I couldn’t look at the bananas on the fruit-stands. At the end of the line I bumped into a big yellow building with arches on its front and a sign out: “Football players please see Secretary.” I looked and saw that it was the Y. M. C. A. “Aha,” says I, “maybe I dine.” I sang a good spiel to the Secretary. They were getting up a light-weight team and wanted talent. Thanking the gods that I was an end instead of a centre, I spun him some dream about the Harlem Y. M. C. A. He said report that afternoon. I went back, choked down ten bananas for strength, and got out on the field in a borrowed suit. They lined up for only five minutes, but that was time enough for me to show what I could do.