At any rate the majority of us forthwith agreed, since plainly it meant
an outing of the most lavish and pleasing nature. At once four
automobiles were pressed into service, three from his own garage and one
specially engaged elsewhere. There was some telephoning _in re_ culinary
supplies to a chef in charge of the famous restaurant below who was _en
rapport_ with our host, and soon some baskets of food were produced and
subsequently the four cars made their appearance at the entryway below.
At dusk of a gray, cold, smoky day we were all bundled into
these--poets, playwrights, novelists, editors (he professed a great
contempt for actors), and forthwith we were off, to do forty-five miles
between five-thirty and seven p.m.
I often think of that ride, the atmosphere of it, and what it told of
our host's point of view. He was always so grave, serene, watchful yet
pleasant and decidedly agreeable, gay even, without seeming so to be.
There was something so amazingly warm and exotic about him and his, and
yet at the same time something so cold and calculated, as if after all
he were saying to himself, "I am the master of all this, am
stage-managing it for my own pleasure." I felt that he looked upon us
all not so much as intimates or friends as rather fine birds or
specimens of one kind and another, well qualified to help him with art
and social ideas if nothing more--hence his interest in us. Also, in his
estimation no doubt, we reflected some slight color or light into his
life, which he craved. We had done things too. Nevertheless, in his own
estimation, he was the master, the Can Grande. He could at will, "take
us up or leave us out," or so he thought. We were mere toys, fine
feathers, cap-and-bell artists. It was nice to, "take us around," have
us with him. Smothered in a great richly braided fur coat and fur cap,
he looked as much the Grand Duke as one might wish.
But I liked him, truly. And what a delicious evening and holiday, all
told, he made of it for us. By leaving a trail of frightened horses, men
and women, and tearing through the gloom as though streets were his
private race-track--I myself as much frightened as any at the roaring
speed of the cars and the possibilities of the road--we arrived at
seven, and by eight were seated to a course dinner of the most
gratifying character. There was no heat in the house as yet, but from
somewhere great logs had been obtained and now blazed in the large
fireplaces. There was no electricity as yet--a private plant was being
installed--but candles and lamps blazed in lovely groups, casting a soft
glow over the great rooms. One room lacked a door, but an immense rug
took its place. There were rugs, hangings and paintings in profusion,
many of them as yet unhung. Some of the most interesting importations of
furniture and statuary were still in the cases in which they had
arrived, with marks of ships and the names of foreign cities upon the
cases. Scattered about the great living-room, dining-room, music-room
and library were enough rugs, divans and chairs as well as musical
instruments--a piano among others--to give the place an air of
completeness and luxury. The walls and ceilings had already been
decorated--in a most florid manner, I must say. Outside were great
balconies and verandahs commanding, as the following morning proved, a
very splendid view of a very bleak sea. The sand dunes! The distant
floor of the sea! The ships! Upstairs were nine suites of one- and
two-rooms and bath. The basement was an intricate world of kitchen,
pantry, engine-room, furnace, wine cellars and what not. Outside was a
tawny waste of sand held together in places in the form of hummocks and
even concealing hills by sand-binding grasses.
That night, because it was windy and dull and bleak, we stayed inside, I
for one going outside only long enough to discover that there were great
wide verandahs of concrete about the house, fit for great entertainments
in themselves, and near at hand, hummocks of sand. Inside all was warm
and flaring enough. The wine cellar seemed to contain all that one might
reasonably desire. Our host once out here was most gay in his mood. He
was most pleasantly interested in the progress of his new home, although
not intensely so. He seemed to have lived a great deal and to be making
the best of everything as though it were something to go through with.
With much talking on the part of us all, the evening passed swiftly
enough. Some of the men could play and sing. One poet recited enchanting
bits of verse. For our inspection certain pieces of furniture and
statuary were unpacked and displayed--a bronze faun some three feet in
height, for one thing. All the time I was sensible of being in contact
with some one who was really in touch with life in a very large way,
financially and otherwise. His mind seemed to be busy with all sorts of
things. There were two Syrians in Paris, he said, who owned a large
collection of rugs suitable for an exhibition. He had an agent who was
trying to secure the best of them for his new home. De Shay had recently
introduced him to a certain Italian count who had a great house in Italy
but could not afford its upkeep. He was going to take over a portion of
its furnishings, after due verification, of course. Did I know the
paintings of Monticelli and Mancini? He had just secured excellent
examples of both. Some time when his new home was further along I must
come out. Then the pictures would be hung, the statuary and furniture in
place. He would get up a week-end party for a select group.
The talk drifted to music and the stage. At once I saw that because of
his taste, wealth and skill, women formed a large and yet rather
toy-like portion of his life, holding about as much relation to his
inner life as do the concubines of an Asiatic sultan. Madame of the
earrings, as I learned from De Shay, was a source of great expense to
him, but at that she was elusive, not easily to be come at. The stage
and Broadway were full of many beauties in various walks of life, many
of whom he knew or to whom he could obtain access. Did I know thus, and
so--such-and-such, and one?
"I'll tell you," he said after a time and when the wine glasses had been
refilled a number of times, "we must give a party out here some time,
something extraordinary, a real one. De Shay and Bielow" (naming another
artist) "and myself must think it out. I know three different
dancers"--and he began to enumerate their qualities. I saw plainly that
even though women played a minor part in his life, they were the fringe
and embroidery to his success and power. At one a.m. we went to our
rooms, having touched upon most of the themes dear to metropolitan
lovers of life and art.
The next morning was wonderful--glittering, if windy. The sea sparkled
beyond the waste of sand. I noted anew the richness of the furnishings,
the greatness of the house. Set down in so much sand and facing the
great sea, it was wonderful. There was no order for breakfast; we came
down as we chose. A samovar and a coffee urn were alight on the table.
Rolls, chops, anything, were brought on order. Possibly because I was
one of the first about, my host singled me out--he was up and dressed
when I came down--and we strolled over the estate to see what we should
see.
Curiously, although I had seen many country homes of pretension and even
luxury, I never saw one that appealed to me more on the ground of
promise and, after a fashion, of partial fulfillment. It was so
unpretentiously pretentious, so really grand in a limited and yet poetic
way. Exteriorly its placement, on a rise of ground commanding that vast
sweep of sea and sand, its verandahs, so very wide--great smooth floors
of red concrete--bordered with stone boxes for flowers and handsomely
designed stone benches, its long walks and drives but newly begun, its
stretch of beach, say a half mile away and possibly a mile and a half
long, to be left, as he remarked, "au naturel," driftwood, stones and
all, struck me most favorably. Only one long pier for visiting yachts
was to be built, and a certain stretch of beach, not over three hundred
feet, cleared for bath houses and a smooth beach. On one spot of land, a
high hummock reaching out into the sea, had already been erected a small
vantage tower, open at the bottom for shade and rest, benches turning in
a circle upon a concrete floor, above it, a top looking more like a
small bleak lighthouse than anything else. In this upper portion was a
room reached by small spiral concrete stairs!
I could not help noting the reserve and _savoir faire_ with which my
host took all this. He was so healthy, assured, interested and, I am
glad to say, not exactly self-satisfied; at least he did not impress me
in that way--a most irritating condition. Plainly he was building a very
splendid thing. His life was nearing its apex. He must not only have had
millions, but great taste to have undertaken, let alone accomplished, as
much as was already visible here. Pointing to a bleak waste of sand
between the house and the sea--and it looked like a huge red and yellow
bird perched upon a waste of sand--he observed, "When you come again in
the spring, that will contain a garden of 40,000 roses. The wind is
nearly always off the sea here. I want the perfume to blow over the
verandahs. I can rotate the roses so that a big percentage of them will
always be in bloom."
We visited the stables, the garage, an artesian well newly driven, a
drive that was to skirt the sea, a sunken garden some distance from the
house and away from the sea.
Next spring I came once more--several times, in fact. The rose garden
was then in bloom, the drives finished, the pictures hung. Although this
was not a world in which society as yet deigned to move, it was entirely
conceivable that at a later period it might, and betimes it was crowded
with people smart enough and more agreeable in the main than the hardy,
strident members of the so-called really inner circles. There were
artists, writers, playwrights, singers, actresses, and some nondescript
figures of the ultra-social world--young men principally who seemed to
come here in connection with beautiful young women, models and other
girls whose beauty was their only recommendation to consideration.
The scene was not without brilliance. A butler and numerous flunkeys
fluttered to and fro. Guests were received at the door by a footman. A
housekeeper and various severe-looking maids governed in the matter of
cleaning. One could play golf, tennis, bridge, motor, fish, swim, drink
in a free and even disconcerting manner or read quietly in one angle or
another of the grounds. There were affairs, much flirting and giggling,
suspicious wanderings to and fro at night--no questions asked as to who
came or whether one was married, so long as a reasonable amount of
decorum was maintained. It was the same on other occasions, only the
house and grounds were full to overflowing with guests and passing
friends, whose machines barked in the drives. I saw as many gay and
fascinating costumes and heard as much clever and at times informative
talk here as anywhere I have been.
During this fall and winter I was engaged in work which kept me very
much to myself. During the period I read much of X----, banks he was
combining, new ventures he was undertaking. Yet all at once one winter's
day, and out of a clear sky, the papers were full of an enormous
financial crash of which he was the center. According to the newspapers,
the first and foremost of a chain of banks of which he was the head, to
say nothing of a bonding and realty company and some street-railway
project on Long Island, were all involved in the crash. Curiously,
although no derogatory mention had previously been made of him, the
articles and editorials were now most vituperative. Their venom was
especially noticeable. He was a get-rich-quick villain of the vilest
stripe; he had been juggling a bank, a trust company, an insurance
company and a land and street-railway speculative scheme as one would
glass balls. The money wherewith he gambled was not his. He had robbed
the poor, deceived them. Yet among all this and in the huge articles
which appeared the very first day, I noted one paragraph which stuck in
my mind, for I was naturally interested in all this and in him. It read:
"Wall Street heard yesterday that Superintendent H---- got his
first information concerning the state in which X----'s affairs
were from quarters where resentment may have been cherished
because of his activity in the Long Island Traction field. This is
one of the Street's 'clover patches' and the success which the
newcomer seemed to be meeting did not provoke great pleasure."
Another item read:
"A hitch in a deal that was to have transferred the South Shore to
the New York and Queens County System, owned by the Long Island
Railroad, at a profit of almost $2,000,000 to X----, was the cause
of all the trouble. Very active displeasure on the part of certain
powers in Wall Street blocked, it is said, the closing of the deal
for the railroad. They did not want him in this field, and were
powerful enough to prevent it. At the same time pressure from
other directions was brought to bear on him. The clearing-house
refused to clear for his banks. X---- was in need of cash, but
still insisting on a high rate of remuneration for the road which
he had developed to an important point. Their sinister influences
entered and blocked the transfer until it was no longer possible
for him to hold out."
Along with these two items was a vast mass of data, really pages,
showing how, when, where he had done thus and so, "juggled accounts"
between one bank and another, all of which he controlled however, and
most of which he owned, drew out large sums and put in their place
mortgages on, or securities in, new companies which he was
organizing--tricks which were the ordinary routine of Wall Street and
hence rather ridiculous as the sub-stone of so vast a hue and cry.
I was puzzled and, more than that, moved by the drama of the man's
sudden end, for I understood a little of finance and its ways, also of
what place and power had plainly come to mean to him. It must be
dreadful. Yet how could it be, I asked myself, if he really owned
fifty-one per cent or more in so many companies that he could be such a
dark villain? After all, ownership is ownership, and control, control.
On the face of the reports themselves his schemes did not look so black.
I read everything in connection with him with care.
As the days passed various other things happened. For one thing, he
tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window of his studio in New
York; for another, he tried to take poison. Now of a sudden a bachelor
sister, of whom I had never heard in all the time I had known him, put
in an appearance as his nearest of kin--a woman whose name was not his
own but a variation of it, an "-ovitch" having suddenly been tacked onto
it. She took him to a sanitarium, from which he was eventually turned
out as a criminal, then to a hospital, until finally he surrendered
himself to the police. The names of great lawyers and other bankers
began to enter the case. Alienists of repute, those fine chameleons of
the legal world, were employed who swore first that he was insane, then
that he was not. His sister, who was a physician and scientist of
repute, asked the transfer of all his property to her on the ground that
he was incompetent and that she was his next of kin. To this she swore,
giving as her reasons for believing him insane that he had "illusions of
grandeur" and that he believed himself "persecuted by eminent
financiers," things which smacked more of sanity than anything else to
me. At the same time he and she, as time rather indicated, had arranged
this in part in the hope of saving something out of the great wreck.
There were other curious features: Certain eminent men in politics and
finance who from revelations made by the books of the various banks were
in close financial if not personal relations with X---- denied this
completely. Curiously, the great cry on the part of these was that he
was insane, must be, and that he was all alone in his schemes. His life
on Broadway, on Long Island, in his studio in New York, were ransacked
for details. Enough could not be made of his gay, shameful, spendthrift
life. No one else, of course, had ever been either gay or shameful
before--especially not the eminent and hounding financiers.
Then from somewhere appeared a new element. In a staggeringly low
tenement region in Brooklyn was discovered somehow or other a very old
man and woman, most unsatisfactory as relatives of such imposing people,
who insisted that they were his parents, that years before because he
and his sister were exceedingly restless and ambitious, they had left
them and had only returned occasionally to borrow money, finally ceasing
to come at all. In proof of this, letters, witnesses, old photos, were
produced. It really did appear as if he and his sister, although they
had long vigorously denied it, really were the son and daughter of the
two who had been petty bakers in Brooklyn, laying up a little
competence of their own. I never knew who "dug" them up, but the reason
why was plain enough. The sister was laying claim to the property as the
next of kin. If this could be offset, even though X---- were insane, the
property would at once be thrown into the hands of the various creditors
and sold under a forced sale, of course--in other words, for a song--for
their benefit. Naturally it was of interest to those who wished to have
his affairs wound up to have the old people produced. But the great
financier had been spreading the report all along that he was from
Russia, that his parents, or pseudo-parents, were still there, but that
really he was the illegitimate son of the Czar of Russia, boarded out
originally with a poor family. Now, however, the old people were brought
from Brooklyn and compelled to confront him. It was never really proved
that he and his sister had neglected them utterly or had done anything
to seriously injure them, but rather that as they had grown in place and
station they had become more or less estranged and so ignored them,
having changed their names and soared in a world little dreamed of by
their parents. Also a perjury charge was made against the sister which
effectually prevented her from controlling his estate, a lease long
enough to give the financiers time for their work. Naturally there was a
great hue and cry over her, the scandal, the shame, that they should
thus publicly refuse to recognize their parents as they did or had when
confronted by them. Horrible! There were most heavily illustrated and
tearful Sunday articles, all blazoned forth with pictures of his house
and studio, his banks, cars, yacht, groups of guests, while the motives
of those who produced the parents were overlooked. The pictures of the
parents confronting X---- and his sister portrayed very old and feeble
people, and were rather moving. They insisted that they were his parents
and wept brokenly in their hands. But why? And he denying it! His
sister, who resented all this bitterly and who stood by him valiantly,
repudiated, for his sake of course, his and her so-called parents and
friends.
I never saw such a running to cover of "friends" in all my life. Of all
those I had seen about his place and in his company, scores on scores of
people reasonably well known in the arts, the stage, the worlds of
finance and music, all eating his dinners, riding in his cars, drinking
his wines, there was scarcely any one now who knew him anything more
than "casually" or "slightly"--oh, so slightly! When rumors as to the
midnight suppers, the Bacchic dancing, the automobile parties to his
great country place and the spirited frolics which occurred there began
to get abroad, there was no one whom I knew who had ever been there or
knew anything about him or them. For instance, of all the people who had
been close or closest and might therefore have been expected to be
friendly and deeply concerned was de Shay, his fidus Achates and
literally his pensioner--yet de Shay was almost the loudest in his
denunciation or at least deprecation of X----, his habits and methods!
Although it was he who had told me of Mme. ---- and her relation to
X----, who urged me to come here, there and the other place, especially
where X---- was the host, always assuring me that it would be so
wonderful and that X---- was really such a great man, so generous, so
worth-while, he was now really the loudest or at least the most
stand-offish in his comments, pretending never to have been very close
to X----, and lifting his eyebrows in astonishment as though he had not
even guessed what he had actually engineered. His "Did-you-hears,"
"Did-you-knows" and "Wouldn't-have-dreamed" would have done credit to a
tea-party. He was so shocked, especially at X----'s robbing poor
children and orphans, although in so far as my reading of the papers
went I could find nothing that went to prove that he had any intention
of robbing anybody--that is, directly. In the usual Wall Street high
finance style he was robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is, he was using
the monies of one corporation which he controlled to bolster up any of
the others which he controlled, and was "washing one hand with the
other," a proceeding so common in finance that to really radically and
truly oppose it, or do away with it, would mean to bring down the whole
fabric of finance in one grand crash.
Be that as it may. In swift succession there now followed the so-called
"legal" seizure and confiscation of all his properties. In the first
place, by alienists representing the District Attorney and the State
banking department, he was declared sane and placed on trial for
embezzlement. Secondly, his sister's plea that his property be put into
her hands as trustee or administrator was thrown out of court and she
herself arrested and confined for perjury on the ground that she had
perjured herself in swearing that she was his next of kin when in
reality his real parents, or so they swore, were alive and in America.
Next, his banks, trust companies and various concerns, including his
great country estate, were swiftly thrown into the hands of receivers
(what an appropriate name!) and wound up "for the benefit of creditors."
All the while X---- was in prison, protesting that he was really not
guilty, that he was solvent, or had been until he was attacked by the
State bank examiner or the department back of him, and that he was the
victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy which was using the State banking
department and other means to drive him out of financial life, and that
solely because of his desire to grow and because by chance he had been
impinging upon one of the choicest and most closely guarded fields of
the ultra-rich of Wall Street--the street railway area in New York and
Brooklyn.
One day, so he publicly swore to the grand jury, by which he was being
examined, as he was sitting in his great offices, in one of the great
sky-scrapers of New York, which occupied an entire floor and commanded
vast panoramas in every direction (another evidence of the man's insane
"delusion of grandeur," I presume), he was called to answer the
telephone. One Mr. Y----, so his assistant said, one of the eminent
financiers of Wall Street and America, was on the wire. Without any
preliminary and merely asking was this Mr. X---- on the wire, the latter
proceeded, "This is Mr. Y----. Listen closely to what I am going to say.
I want you to get out of the street railway business in New York or
something is going to happen to you. I am giving you a reasonable
warning. Take it." Then the phone clicked most savagely and ominously
and superiorly at the other end.
"I knew at the time," went on X----, addressing the grand jury, "that I
was really listening to the man who was most powerful in such affairs in
New York and elsewhere and that he meant what he said. At the same time
I was in no position to get out without closing up the one deal which
stood to net me two million dollars clear if I closed it. At the same
time I wanted to enter this field and didn't see why I shouldn't. If I
didn't it spelled not ruin by any means but a considerable loss, a very
great loss, to me, in more ways than one. Oddly enough, just at this
time I was being pressed by those with whom I was associated to wind up
this particular venture and turn my attention to other things. I have
often wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why they
should have become so pressing just at this time. At the same time,
perhaps I was a little vain and self-sufficient. I had once got the
better of some agents of another great financier in a Western Power
deal, and I felt that I could put this thing through too. Hence I
refused to heed the warning. However, I found that all those who were
previously interested to buy or at least develop the property were now
suddenly grown cold, and a little later when, having entered on several
other matters, I needed considerable cash, the State banking department
descended on me and, crying fraud and insolvency, closed all my banks.
"You know how it is when they do this to you. Cry 'Fire!' and you can
nearly wreck a perfectly good theater building. Depositors withdraw,
securities tumble, investigation and legal expenses begin, your
financial associates get frightened or ashamed and desert you. Nothing
is so squeamish or so retiring and nervous as money. Time will show that
I was not insolvent at the time. The books will show a few technically
illegal things, but so would the books or the affairs of any great bank,
especially at this time, if quickly examined. I was doing no more than
all were doing, but they wanted to get me out--and they did."
Regardless of proceedings of various kinds--legal, technical and the
like--X---- was finally sent to the penitentiary, and spent some time
there. At the same time his confession finally wrecked about nine other
eminent men, financiers all. A dispassionate examination of all the
evidence eight years later caused me to conclude without hesitation that
the man had been a victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy, the object of
which was to oust him from opportunities and to forestall him in methods
which would certainly have led to enormous wealth. He was apparently in
a position and with the brains to do many of the things which the ablest
and coldest financiers of his day had been and were doing, and they did
not want to be bothered with, would not brook, in short, his
approaching rivalry. Like the various usurpers of regal powers in
ancient days, they thought it best to kill a possible claimant to the
throne in his infancy.
But that youth of his! The long and devious path by which he had come!
Among the papers relating to the case and to a time when he could not
have been more than eighteen, and when he was beginning his career as a
book agent, was a letter written to his mother (August, 1892), which
read:
"MY DEAR PARENTS: Please answer me at once if I can have anything
of you, or something of you or nothing. Remember this is the first
and the last time in my life that I beg of you anything. You have
given to the other child not $15 but hundreds, and now when I, the
very youngest, ask of you, my parents, $15, are you going to be so
hard-hearted as to refuse me? Without these $15 it is left to me
to be without income for two or three weeks.
"For God's sake, remember what I ask of you, and send me at once
so that I should cease thinking of it. Leon, as I have told you,
will give me $10, $15 he has already paid for the contract, and
your $15 will make $25. Out of this I need $10 for a ticket and
$15 for two or three weeks' board and lodging.
"Please answer at once. Don't wait for a minute, and send me the
money or write me one word 'not.' Remember this only that if you
refuse me I will have nothing in common with you.
"Your son,
"----"
There was another bit of testimony on the part of one Henry Dom, a
baker, who for some strange reason came forward to identify him as some
one he had known years before in Williamsburgh, which read:
"I easily recognize them" (X---- and his sister) "from their
pictures in the newspapers. I worked for X----'s father, who was a
baker in Williamsburgh, and frequently addressed letters that were
written by X---- Senior and his wife to Dr. Louise X---- who was
then studying medicine in Philadelphia. X---- was then a boy going
to school, but working in his father's bakery mornings and
evenings. He did not want to do that, moaned a great deal, and his
parents humored him in his attitude. He was very vain, liked to
appear intellectual. They kept saying to their friends that he
should have a fine future. Five years later, after I had left them
once, I met the mother and she told me that X---- was studying
banking and getting along fine."
Some seven years after the failure and trial by which he had so
summarily been disposed of and after he had been released from prison, I
was standing at a certain unimportant street corner in New York waiting
for a car when I saw him. He was passing in the opposite direction, not
very briskly, and, as I saw, plainly meditatively. He was not so well
dressed. The clothes he wore while good were somehow different, lacking
in that exquisite something which had characterized him years before.
His hat--well, it was a hat, not a Romanoff shako nor a handsome panama
such as he had affected in the old days. He looked tired, a little worn
and dusty, I thought.
My first impulse was of course to hail him, my second not, since he had
not seen me. It might have been embarrassing, and at any rate he might
not have even remembered me. But as he walked I thought of the great
house by the sea, the studio, the cars, the 40,000 roses, the crowds at
his summer place, the receptions in town and out, Madame of the earrings
(afterward married to a French nobleman), and then of the letter to his
mother as a boy, the broken shoes in the winter time, his denial of his
parents, the telephone message from the financial tiger. "Vanity,
vanity," saith the preacher. The shores of our social seas are strewn
with pathetic wrecks, the whitening bone of half-sand-buried ships.
At the next corner he paused, a little uncertain apparently as to which
way to go, then turned to the left and was lost. I have never seen nor
heard of him since.
_The Mighty Rourke_
When I first met him he was laying the foundation for a small dynamo in
the engine-room of the repair shop at Spike, and he was most unusually
loud in his protestations and demands. He had with him a dozen Italians,
all short, swarthy fellows of from twenty-five to fifty years of age,
who were busy bringing material from a car that had been pushed in on
the side-track next to the building. This was loaded with crushed stone,
cement, old boards, wheelbarrows, tools, and the like, all of which were
to be used in the labor that he was about to undertake. He himself was
standing in the doorway of the shop where the work was to be conducted,
coat off, sleeves rolled up, and shouting with true Irish insistence,
"Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Get the shovels, now! Get the picks! Bring
some sand here! Bring some stone! Where's the cement, now? Where's the
cement? Jasus Christ! I must have some cement! What arre ye all doin'?
What do ye think ye're up here fer? Hurry, now, hurry! Bring the
cement!" and then, having concluded this amazing fanfare, calmly turning
to gaze about as if he were the only one in the world who had the right
to stand still.
More or less oppressed with life myself at the time, I was against all
bosses, and particularly against so seemingly a vicious one as this.
"What a slave driver!" I thought. "What a brute!" And yet I remember
thinking that he was not exactly unpleasant to look at, either--quite
the contrary. He was medium in height, thick of body and neck, with
short gray hair and mustache, and bright, clear, twinkling Irish gray
eyes, and he carried himself with an air of unquestionable authority. It
was much as if he had said, "I am the boss here"; and, indeed, he was.
Is it this that sends the Irish to rule as captains of hundreds the
world over?
The job he was bossing was not very intricate or important, but it was
interesting. It consisted of digging a trench ten by twelve feet, and
shaping it up with boards into a "form," after which concrete was to be
mixed and poured in, and some iron rods set to fasten the engine to--an
engine bed, no less. It was not so urgent but that it might have been
conducted with far less excitement, but what are you to do when you are
naturally excitable, love to make a great noise, and feel that things
are going forward whether they are or not? Plainly this particular
individual loved noise and a great stir. So eager was he to have done
with it, no matter what it was or where, that he was constantly trotting
to and fro, shouting, "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Hurry, now, bring the
shovels! Bring the picks!" and occasionally bursting forth with a
perfect avalanche of orders. "Up with it! Down with it! Front with it!
Back with it! In with it! Out with it!" all coupled with his favorite
expletive, "Jasus Christ," which was as innocent of evil, I subsequently
came to know, as a prayer. In short, he was simply wild Irish, and that
was all there was to him--a delightful specimen, like Namgay Doola.
But, as I say, at the time he seemed positively appalling to me, a
virulent specimen, and I thought, "The Irish brute! To think of human
beings having to work for a brute like that! To think of his driving men
like that!" However, I soon began to discover that he was not so bad as
he seemed, and then I began to like him.
The thing that brought about this swift change of feeling in me was the
attitude of his men toward him. Although he was so insistent with his
commands, they did not seem to mind nor to strain themselves working.
They were not killing themselves, by any means. He would stand over
them, crying, "Up with it! Up with it! Up with it! Up with it!" or "Down
with it! Down with it! Down with it!" until you would have imagined
their nerves would be worn to a frazzle. As it was, however, they did
not seem to care any more than you would for the ticking of a clock;
rather, they appeared to take it as a matter of course, something that
had to be, and that one was prepared for. Their steps were in the main
as leisurely as those of idlers on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. They
carried boards or stone as one would objects of great value. One could
not help smiling at the incongruity of it; it was farcical. Finally
gathering the full import of it all, I ventured to laugh, and he turned
on me with a sharp and yet not unkindly retort.
"Ha! ha! ha!" he mocked. "If ye had to work as hard as these min, ye
wouldn't laugh."
I wanted to say, "Hard work, indeed!" but instead I replied, "Is that
so? Well, I don't see that they're killing themselves, or you either.
You're not as fierce as you sound."
Then I explained that I was not laughing at them but at him, and he took
it all in good part. Since I was only a nominal laborer here, not a real
one--permitted to work for my health, for twelve cents an hour--we fell
to conversing upon railroad matters, and in this way our period of
friendship began.
As I learned that morning, Rourke was the foreman-mason for minor tasks
for all that part of the railroad that lay between New York and fifty
miles out, on three divisions. He had a dozen or so men under him and
was in possession of one car, which was shunted back and forth between
the places in which he happened to be working. He was a builder of
concrete platforms, culverts, coal-bins, sidewalks, bridge and building
piers, and, in fact, anything that could be made out of crushed stone
and cement, or bricks and stone, and he was sent here and there, as
necessity required. As he explained to me at the time, he sometimes rose
as early as four a.m. in order to get to his place of labor by seven.
The great railroad company for which he toiled was no gentle master, and
did not look upon his ease, or that of his men, as important. At the
same time, as he himself confessed, he did not mind hard work--liked it,
in short. He had been working now for the company for all of twenty-two
years, "rain or shine." Darkness or storm made no difference to him.
"Shewer, I have to be there," he observed once with his quizzical,
elusive Irish grin. "They're not payin' me wages fer lyin' in bed. If ye
was to get up that way yerself every day fer a year, me b'y," he added,
eyeing my spare and none too well articulated frame, "it'd make a man av
ye."
"Yes?" I said tolerantly. "And how much do you get, Rourke?"
"Two an' a half a day."
"You don't say!" I replied, pretending admiration.
The munificence of the corporation that paid him two and a half dollars
a day for ten hours' work, as well as for superintending and
constructing things of such importance, struck me forcibly. Perhaps, as
we say in America, he "had a right" to be happy, only I could not see
it. At the same time, I could not help thinking that he was better
situated than myself at the time. I had been ill, and was now earning
only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the
foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such a
loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out
from under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influence
so to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. The
great thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimen
of foreman the better I liked him. He was genial, really kindly,
amazingly simple and sincere. I decided to appeal to him to take me on
his staff.
"How would you like to take me, Mr. Rourke, and let me work for you?" I
asked hopefully, after explaining to him why I was here.
"Shewer," he replied. "Ye'd do fine."
"Would I have to work with the Italians?" I asked, 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."