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Yet at thirty he began acting queerly, and it was generally thought that he was drinking. Often now he did not go home at night and was frequently found dead asleep on one of his pool-tables. He had fixed up a den of a room where they would move him to "sleep it off."
Plans were at once formulated and work begun on a club, the United States Naval Men's Club at the American base. This club, which is now completed, contains dormitories, shower-baths, a canteen, and a billiard room with two pool-tables.
But Jim was long and thin and bent at the waist from stooping over pool-tables, and he was what might have been known in the indiscriminating North as a corner loafer. "Jelly-bean" is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular I am idling, I have idled, I will idle.
I have built a gymnasium for them, given them books, pool-tables, and games, to say nothing of the swimming-tank. I have arranged the annual outings. I have established a pension-list. But all this seems to have done no good. I am at the end of the rope. Oh, the poor devils who work are all right; it's the men outside who are raising all this trouble; it's the union, not the men.
They had to CARRY him." "Jim? Was Jim with you?" "In spirit, yes; in body only for a time. For a brief while we went gaily, hand in hand, then Jim lagged. He's a nice boy, but weak; he falters beneath a load; and, as for pool, why, I've slept on pool-tables, so naturally I know the angles better than he. Ha! that's a funny line, isn't it?
The boys had begun to earn their own money early by the splitting of wood and the shoveling of snow, by the vending of soap, and the conduct of delivery-wagons. They spent their evenings at pool-tables or on corners. The elder girls had accepted positions in the various emporia of the village as soon as they could. They counted the long hours of the shop life as an escape from worse.
I know the angles of pool-tables because I've slept on 'em, see? Don't hurry; I'll wait for you. Even an 'act' like mine needs applause." But Lorelei was in no laughing mood. She questioned Bob searchingly and soon learned of Jim's visits, of the flask, of the pool games. When she understood it all her eyes were glowing, but she found nothing to say.
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