He continued, “I’m awful glad to see a white man. This place is full
of Bohunks, and Slavs, and Rooshians, and Poles and Lickerishes
(Lithuanians?). They’re not bad to have around, but they ain’t
Cawcasians. They all talk Eyetalian.”
The fellow’s manner breathed not only race-fraternity, but industrial
fraternity. It had no suggestion of sheltered agricultural caution.
It was sophisticated and anti-capitalistic. It said, “You and I are
against the system. That’s enough for brotherhood.”
Now that he stood and refilled his pipe from a tobacco box nailed just
inside the door, I saw him as in a picture-frame. He had powerful but
slanting shoulders. He was so tall he must needs stoop to avoid the
lintel. With his bent neck, he looked as though he could hold up a mine
caving in. His general outlines seemed to be hewn from fence-rails,
then hung with grotesque muscles of loose leather. His eyebrows were
grown together. From looking down long passageways his eyes were
marvellously owl-like. He was cadaverous. He had a beak nose. He had
a retreating chin but, breaking the rules of phrenology, he managed
to convey the impression of a driving personality. He looked like an
enormous pick-axe.
He calmly commented: “Them Polacks waste powder awful. Not only on
Sunday, for fun, but down in the mine they use twice too much. And
they can’t blast the hardest coal, either.... And they’re always
gettin’ careless and blowin’ themselves to hell and everybody else.
It’s awful, it’s awful,” he said, but in a most philosophic tone.
He lowered his voice and pointed with his pipe stem: “Them people
that live in the next house are supposed to be Cawcasians, but they
haven’t a marriage license. They let their little girl go for beer this
afternoon, for them fellows explodin’ powder over there. ’Taint no way
to raise a child. That child’s mother was a well-behaved Methodist till
she married a Polack, and had four children, and he died, and they
died, and some say she poisoned them all. Now she’s got this child by
this no-account white man. They live without a license, like birds. Yet
they eat off weddin’s.”
“Eat off weddings?”
“Yes,” he said. “These Bohunks and Lickerishes all have one kind of a
wedding. It lasts three days and everybody comes. The best man is king.
He bosses the plates.”
“Bosses the plates?”
“Yes. They buy a lot of cheap plates. Every man that comes must break
a plate with a dollar. The plate is put in the middle of the floor.
He stands over it and bangs the dollar down. If he breaks the plate
he gets to kiss and hug the bride. If he doesn’t break it, the young
couple get that dollar. He must keep on givin’ them dollars in this way
till he breaks the plate. Eats and plates and beer cost about fifty
dollars. The young folks clear about two hundred dollars to start life
on.”
“And,” he continued, “the folks next door make a practice of eatin’
round at weddin’s without puttin’ down their dollars.”