ight nights and Sundays, and never struck for an
eight-hour day, or union wages. When the fighting was over, and soldiers
were sick, or discouraged, and despondent, an Irish soldier would come
along, maybe on crutches, or with a bullet in his inwards, and tell
funny stories and make the discouraged fellows laugh in spite of
themselves, and when another fight was on, you had to tie the wounded
Irish soldiers to their cots in the hospital, or put them in jail to
keep them from forgetting their wounds, and going to the front for one
more fight. Dad says if there was an Irish nation with an army and navy,
the whole world would have to combine to whip them, and yet the nation
that has the control of the Irish people treats them worse than San
Francisco treats Chinamen, makes them live on potatoes, and allows
landlords to take away the potatoes if they are shy on the rent. Gosh,
if I was an Irishman I would see the country that walked on my neck in
hell before I would fight for it. (Gee, dad looked over my shoulder and
saw what I had written, and he cuffed me on the side of the head, and
said I was an incendiary and that I ought to have sense enough not to
write treason while a guest on British soil.) Well, I don't care a
darn. It makes me hot under the collar when I think of the brave Irish
fellows, and I wonder why they don't come to America in a body and be
aldermen and policemen. When I get home I am going to join the Fenians,
and raise thunder, just as quick as I am old enough.

[Illustration: Keep away from the banks for fear the banks will cave in
329]

Well, sir, we have been through the Suez canal, and for a great modern
piece of engineering it doesn't size up with a sewer in Milwaukee, or
a bayou in Louisiana. It is just digging a railroad cut through the
desert, and letting in the water, and there you are. The only question
in its construction was plenty of dredging machines, and a place to
pile the dirt, and water that just came in of its own accord, and stays
there, and smells like thunder, and you see the natives look at it, and
keep away from the banks for fear the banks will cave in on them, and
give them a bath before their year is up, cause they don't bathe but
once a year, and when they skip a year nobody knows about it, except
that they smell a year or so more frowsy, like butter that has been left
out of the ice box. Our boat went right along, and got out of the canal,
because it was a mail boat, but the