The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-08-18

T was busy working my booze hy- draulic when I see an arid appearin' pilgrim 'longsde lool1in thirsty as an alkali fiat.
 ." Get in, says I, and the way he obeyed orders looked like he'd had mill itary trainin' I felt sort of drawed to him from the way he handled his flicker i; took it straight and runnin' over; then sopped his hands on the bar and smelled of his fingers. He seemed to just soak it up both ways-reg'lar human blotter.
 :" You lap it up like a man. says l., like a cowman-full growed-ever been west?
 !" 'Nope,' says he, born here
 " We'll I'm a stranger says l, out absorbin' such beauties of architecture and free lunch as offers along the line. If I ain't keepin' you up, I'd be glad of your company
 "'Im your assistant lunch buster, says he and in the course of things he fur ther explained that he was a tugboat fireman out on strike, givin' me the follerin' information about the te-up:
 'It all come up over a dose of dys- pepsia--"
 Back up' interrupted "Kink," spuirm- ing; "are you plumb bug? Get together! You're certainly the Having Kid. Ye must have stone bruised your heel and got con- cesson of the braip."
 ''Yes, sirl Indigestion Billings contin- ued. "Old man Badrich and the Badrich Transportation company had it terrible. It lands on his solar every morning about g o'clock, gettin' worse steady, and reaches perhellon about about il. He can tell the time of day by taste. One morn ing when his mouth felt like about 10:45 in comes a committee from Bremen and Engineers Local No. 21 with demand for more wages, proddin' him with the intimations that If he didn't ante they'd tie up all his boats"
 'T s'pose a teaspoonful of balxin' soda assimiated internally around the environ nnents of his appendix would have spared the strike and cheated me out of bein' q hero. As the poet might have said-'Upon such slender pegs is this our greatness hung"
 "Oh, Gawdr' exclaimed Mullins piously
 Anyhow, the bitterness in the old mans inner tubes showed in the bile of his answer, and he told 'em if they want ed more money they could work nights as well as days He intimated further that they'd ought to be satisfied with their wages as they'd undoubtedly foller the same line of business i'm the next world and wouldn't get q cent for feedin' the fires neither.
 Next mornin' the strike was called, and the guy thet breathed treachery and walked outs was one Oily Heegan. fur ther submerged under the titles of presi- dent of the Federation of Fresh Water Bremen: also chairman of the United Waterfront Workmen. which last takes in everything doin' business along the river except the wrarf rats and typhoid germs, and it's with the disreputableness of this party that infected myself to the detriment of labor and the triumph of the law.
 ID O'Hara Heegan Is an able man. you bet. and inside of 8 week he's spread the strike till it was the cleanest. dirti- est te-up ever known. The hospitals and the morgues was full of non-unon men. but the river was empty all right. Yes, he had a persuadin' method of arbitra- tion quite convincing to the most cal loused, involving the layin on of tho lead pipe.
 "Things got to be pretty fierce by and by. for they had the police buffaloed and disturbances got plentyer than the casualties at a butchers picnic The strikers got hungry, too, finally because the principles of uno-isms like a rash on tries works three shifts a day even If his outsides is idle and steaming with Social ism
 " Oily fed em drayloads of eloquence but it didn't seem to be real fillln' They'd leave the lectures and rob a bakery.
 "He was a wonde, though; just sat in his office and kept the shipowners waitin' in line swearin' bitter and refined cuss words about ignorant fiend' and 'cussed peda gogue,' which last, for Kinks en- nghtenment means a kind of meetin house.
 "These here details my new friend give me. ending with a eulogy on Oily Hee- gan, the Idol of the Idle
 "'If he says starve, we starve,' says he.