t so excitable and so
helplessly self-reliant that there was no way of aiding him without
doing it in a secret or rather self-effacing manner. He would have much
preferred to struggle along alone and fail, though I doubt whether real
failure could have come to Rourke so essentially capable was he.

In another three weeks the work was really given him to do, and then
began one of the finest exhibitions of Irish domination and
self-sufficiency that I have ever witnessed. We moved to Mott Haven
Yard, a great network of tracks and buildings, in the center of which
this new building was to be erected. Rourke was given a large force of
men, whom he fairly gloried in bossing. He had as many as forty
Italians, to say nothing of a number of pseudo-carpenters and masons
(not those shrewd hawks clever enough to belong to the union, but
wasters and failures of another type) who did the preliminary work of
digging for the foundation, etc. Handling these, Rourke was in his
element. He loved to see so much brisk work going on. He would trot to
and fro about the place, beaming in the most angelic fashion, and
shouting orders that could be heard all over the neighborhood. It was
delicious to watch him. At times he would stand by the long trenches
where the men were digging for the foundation, a great line of them,
their backs bent over their work, and rub his hands in pleasingly human
satisfaction, saying, "We're goin' along fine, Teddy. I can jist see me
way to the top av the buildin'," and then he would proceed to harass and
annoy his men out of pure exuberance of spirits.

"Ye waant to dig it so, man," or, "Ye don't handle yer pick right; can't
ye see that? Hold it this way." Sometimes he would get down in the
trench and demonstrate just how it was to be done, a thing which greatly
amused some of the workmen. Frequently he would exhibit to me little
tricks or knacks of his trade, such as throwing a trowel ten feet so
that it would stick in a piece of wood; turning a shovel over with a
lump of dirt on it and not dropping the lump, and similar simple acts,
always adding, "Ye'll niver be a mason till ye can do that."

When he was tired of fussing with the men outside he would come around
to the little wooden shed, where I was keeping the mass of orders and
reports in shape and getting his material ready for him, and look over
the papers in the most knowing manner. When he had satisfied himself
that everything was going right, he would