It was Sunday,
           and,
         according to his custom on
             that day,
           McTeague took his dinner
               at two
             in the afternoon
               at the car conductors' coffee-joint
             on Polk Street.

    He had
           a thick gray soup;
        heavy,
           underdone meat,
         very hot,
           on a cold plate;
        two kinds of vegetables;
           and a sort
               of suet pudding,
        full of strong butter
                 and sugar.

    On his way back
           to his office,
         one block above,
         he stopped
               at Joe Frenna's saloon and
              bought a pitcher
                   of steam beer.

    It was his habit
          to leave the pitcher
              there on
                   his way to dinner.

    Once in his office,
           or,
         as he called
               it on his signboard,
         "Dental Parlors,"
            he took
               off his coat and shoes,
           unbuttoned his vest,
         and,
           having crammed
               his little stove full
             of coke,
         lay back in his operating
               chair at the bay window,
           reading the paper,
         drinking his beer,
           and smoking
               his huge porcelain pipe
             while his food digested;
        crop-full,
           stupid,
         and warm.

    By and by,
           gorged with steam beer,
         and overcome
               by the heat
                   of the room,
           the cheap tobacco,
         and the effects
               of his heavy meal,
           he dropped off to sleep.

    Late in
           the afternoon
         his canary bird,
           in its gilt cage
              just over his head,
         began to sing.

    He woke slowly,
           finished the rest
               of his beer
         --very flat and stale
               by this time--
           and taking
               down his concertina
                   from the bookcase,
           where in week days it
              kept the company
                   of seven volumes
                 of "Allen's Practical Dentist,"
                  played upon it
                       some half-dozen very mournful airs.

    McTeague looked forward
           to these Sunday afternoons
         as a period
               of relaxation and enjoyment.

    He invariably
          spent them
               in the same fashion.

    These were his only pleasures
          --to eat,
           to smoke,
         to sleep,
           and to play
               upon his concertina.

    The six lugubrious airs
         that he knew,
           always carried him back
               to the time
             when he
                was a car-boy
                       at the Big Dipper Mine
                     in Placer County,
         ten years before.

    He remembered the years
         he had
              spent there trundling
                   the heavy cars
                 of ore
                   in and
                 out of the tunnel
                   under the direction
                       of his father.

    For thirteen days of
           each fortnight his father
        was a steady,
           hard-working shift-boss of the mine.

    Every other Sunday
         he became an irresponsible animal,
           a beast,
         a brute,
           crazy with alcohol.

    McTeague remembered his mother,
           too,
         who,
           with the help
               of the Chinaman,
         cooked for forty miners.

    She was an overworked drudge,
           fiery and energetic
               for all that,
         filled with the
               one idea of
            having her son
                  rise in life
                and enter a profession.

    The chance
        had come at last
         when the father died,
           corroded with alcohol,
         collapsing in a few hours.

    Two or three years later
           a travelling dentist
          visited the mine and
              put up his tent
                   near the bunk-house.

    He was more
          or less of a charlatan,
           but he fired
               Mrs. McTeague's ambition,
         and young McTeague
            went away with him
                  to learn his profession.

    He had learnt it
          after a fashion,
           mostly by watching
               the charlatan operate.

    He had read
           many of the necessary books,
         but he
            was too hopelessly stupid
                  to get
                       much benefit from them.

    Then one day
           at San Francisco
        had come the news
               of his mother's death;
        she had
              left him some money
          --not much,
           but enough
              to set him