d, wondering how I would
make out with a pick and shovel. My frame was so spare at the time that
the question must have amused him, considering the type of physique
required for day labor.

"There'll be plenty av work fer ye to do without ever yer layin' a hand
to a pick er shovel," he replied comfortingly. "Shewer, that's no work
fer white min. Let the nagurs do it. Look at their backs an' arrms, an'
then look at yers."

I was ready to blush for shame. These poor Italians whom I was so ready
to contemn were immeasurably my physical superiors.

"But why do you call them negroes, Rourke?" I asked after a time.
"They're not black."

"Well, bedad, they're not white, that's waan thing shewer," he added.
"Aany man can tell that be lookin' at thim."

I had to smile. It was so dogmatic and unreasoning.

"Very well, then, they're black," I said, and we left the matter.

Not long after I put in a plea to be transferred to him, at his request,
and it was granted. The day that I joined his flock, or gang, as he
called it, he was at Williamsbridge, a little station north on the
Harlem, building a concrete coal-bin. It was a pretty place, surrounded
by trees and a grass-plot, a vast improvement upon a dark indoor shop,
and seemed to me a veritable haven of rest. Ah, the smiling morning sun,
the green leaves, the gentle fresh winds of heaven!

Rourke was down in an earthen excavation under the depot platform when I
arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and
when I looked in on him hopefully he looked up and smiled.

"So here ye arre at last," he said with a grin.

"Yes," I laughed.

"Well, ye're jist in time; I waant ye to go down to the ahffice."

"Certainly," I replied, but before I could say more he climbed out of
his hole, his white jeans odorous of the new-turned earth, and fished in
the pocket of an old gray coat which lay beside him for a soiled and
crumpled letter, which he finally unfolded with his thick, clumsy
fingers. Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly.

"I waant ye to go to Woodlawn," he continued, "an' look after some bolts
that arre up there--there's a keg av thim--an' sign the bill fer thim,
an' ship thim down to me. An' thin I waant ye to go down to the ahffice
an' take thim this o.k." Here again he fished around and produced
another crumpled slip, this time of a yellow color (how well I came to
know them!), which I soon learned was an o.k. blank, a form which had t