“I remember an Irishman, quite of the type of Micky Free in Lever’s
novel, a rollicking, jolly child of the Emerald Isle, pretty badly
battered, but with a sparkle in his eye at which you could have lit
a candle. He was from Dublin. I thought I should speak cheerfully to
him, so I said, ‘Well, now, aren’t you lucky to be here, instead of
home yonder, getting your head broken in a riot?’ ‘Troth, I am, sir,’
said he. ‘Lucky to be here, anyway. And lucky is anny man if he’ll only
get a grave to lie in, let alone a comfortable bed like this. Glory
be! it’s myself that’s been the lucky one all the time.’ Near him lay
another. ‘Don’t spake to him, your honor,’ said the first man with a
laugh. ‘Sure, he’s a Sinn Feiner.’ But both of them were of opinion
that the loyalty of the rebels might be awakened by contact with German
shells. ‘Bring them out here, sir,’ said they, ‘and they won’t be
Irishmen if they don’t get their dander riz with a whiz-bang flung at
them. That would settle their German philandering. Sure, isn’t it too
bad what we’ve been enduring to enable the spalpeens to stay at home,
upsetting the State, flinging Home Rule back maybe a generation, with
their foolishness, and we as good Irishmen as themselves can be?’
[Illustration:
_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._