“By George!” said I, “you’re ahead of Fitzsimmons, but not quite up to Sullivan.”

“Fitz wasn’t a heavy man,” said Bill, “but a dead game fighter.”

I saw then that I had him!  So I sat down on the grass near by and we had great talk about the comparative merits of Fitzsimmons and Sullivan and Corbett and Jack Johnson, a department of knowledge in which he out-distanced me.  He even told me of an exploit or two of his own, which showed that he was able to take care of himself.

While we talked he ate his luncheon, and a downright gargantuan luncheon it was, backed by an appetite which if it were offered to the highest bidder on the New York Stock Exchange would, I am convinced, bring at least ten thousand dollars in cash.  It even made me envious.

There were three huge corned-beef sandwiches, three hard-boiled eggs, a pickle six inches long and fat to boot, four doughnuts so big that they resembled pitching quoits, a bottle of coffee and milk, a quarter of a pie, and, to cap the climax, an immense raw onion.  It was worth a long journey to see Bill eat that onion.  He took out his clasp knife, and after stripping off the papery outer shell, cut the onion into thick dewy slices.  Then he opened one of the sandwiches and placed several of them on the beef, afterward sprinkling them with salt from a small paper parcel.  Having restored the top slice of bread he took a moon-shaped bite out of one end of this glorified sandwich.

“I like onions,” said he.

When we first sat down he had offered to share his luncheon with me but I told him I had just been to dinner, and I observed that he had no difficulty in taking care of every crumb in his “bucket.”  It was wonderful to see.

Having finished his luncheon he went down to the brook and got a drink, and then sat down comfortably with his back among the ferns of the roadside, crossed his legs, and lit his pipe.  There was a healthy and wholesome flush in his face, and as he blew off the first cloud of smoke he drew a sigh of complete comfort and looked around at me with a lordly air such as few monarchs, no matter how well fed, could have bettered.  He had worked and sweat for what he got, and was now taking his ease in his roadside inn.  I wonder sometimes if anybody in the world experiences keener joys than unwatched common people.

How we talked!  From pugilists we proceeded to telephones, and from that to wages, hours, and strikes, and from that we leaped easily to Alaska and gold-mining, and touched in passing upon Theodore Roosevelt.

“I was just thinking,” I said, “that you and I can enjoy some things that were beyond the reach of the greatest kings of the world.”

“How’s that?” said he.

“Why, Napoleon never saw a telephone nor talked through one.”

“That’s so!” he laughed.

“And Caesar couldn’t have dreamed that such a thing as you are doing now was a possibility—­nor George Washington, either.”