He took a keen interest in this secretary. Her name was Annabel Holznagel. They began attending Munocracy meetings together, and one night, after a few months’ acquaintance, he talked her into sleeping in his bed. He made it a challenge to her intelligence. She accepted. Ralph admired her for it and soon they were married. The first year, they moved into the house on Amelia Street in what they now called the Old Neighborhood. The second year, Berry-berry was born. And by the third year there was no longer any talk of Munocracy in the house. The movement had ceased to exist. On several occasions Ralph halfheartedly urged Annabel to think about Socialism. The first time she smiled at him indulgently, but on all subsequent occasions she looked at him blankly, as if she had not heard a word he said. But Ralph continued to need someone with whom he could discuss these urgent and radical matters. He took to spending many of his free hours in neighborhood speakeasies talking about his beliefs. But when a successful businessman talks about sharing the wealth, he sets himself up for a certain amount of ridicule. Ralph at first defended himself on the basis that if a tiger lives in a jungle, he has to obey its laws, but gradually he switched over to atheism, another radical idea that had less to do with a man’s pocketbook. The men respected Ralph Williams and they liked to listen and to try to argue with him. But his long practice gave him the edge in a discussion, and when these cronies grew tired of defeat they began to avoid him. He would then take his patronage to some new place, and before long he had an entire round of places where he was known and could visit them like stops on a vaudeville tour.

He soon became known affectionately to the men in these bars as The Tiger of Amelia Street. They looked forward to his coming because he had charm and humor; and as the years passed by, he no longer felt the need to talk with them exclusively of urgent and radical matters. He even discovered that an occasional change of topic was needed to hold their interest and esteem. And a man with his genius for persuasion and good fellowship could as easily stiffen the ears of a group of men by recounting to them the wild doings of his son, as by telling over and over again of his profane beliefs.

Berry-berry became his favorite topic, and he was shrewd enough to parcel out these stories with the discretion of an old trouper trained in judging the attention span of his audience. The first such story was of Berry-berry’s name, which needed an explanation because some men claimed it was a disease. The flat truth is that it came from some foolishness of Annabel’s: as a baby, the boy’s cheeks were astonishingly red; as she plucked them in quick succession she would say berry berry berry, to make the child giggle. But Ralph’s story was this: he claimed that in the Belgian Congo there is a tribe known as the Galbralians. Now, when the king of this tribe gathers all of his sons together, after the youngest has matured, he puts them through a long series of rigid competitions. The victor among them from that day forward is known as Berry-berry, which, in the Galbralian language invented by Ralph Williams, means Son of the Tiger.