“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.”

I had to smile.  It was so dogmatic and unreasoning.

“Very well, then, they’re black,” I said, and we left the matter.

Not long after I put in a plea to be transferred to him, at his request, and it was granted.  The day that I joined his flock, or gang, as he called it, he was at Williamsbridge, a little station north on the Harlem, building a concrete coal-bin.  It was a pretty place, surrounded by trees and a grass-plot, a vast improvement upon a dark indoor shop, and seemed to me a veritable haven of rest.  Ah, the smiling morning sun, the green leaves, the gentle fresh winds of heaven!

Rourke was down in an earthen excavation under the depot platform when I arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and when I looked in on him hopefully he looked up and smiled.