"All right, sir! give you your chance directly. Don't speak yet,—ain't through, if you please. Well, sir, it's agen nature,—you may talk agen it, and work agen it, and fight agen it till all's blue, and what good'll it do? You can't get an Irishman, and, what's more, a free-born American citizen, to put himself on a level with a nigger,—not by no manner of means. No, sir; you can turn out the whole lot, and get another after it, and another after that, and so on to the end of the chapter, and you can't find men among 'em all that'll stay and have him strutting through 'em, up to his stool and his books, grand as a peacock."
"Would they work with him?"
"At the same engines, and the like, do you mean?"
"Yes."
"Nary time, so 'tain't likely they'll work under him. Now, sir, you see I know what I'm saying, and I'm saying it to you, Mr. Surrey, and not to your father, because he won't take a word from me nor nobody else,—and here's just the case. Now I ain't bullying, you understand, and I say it because somebody else'd say it, if I didn't, uglier and rougher. Abe Franklin'll have to go out of this shop in precious short order, or every man here'll bolt next Saturday night. There! now I've done, sir, and you can fire away."
But as he showed no signs of "firing away," and stood still, pondering, Jim broke out again:—
"Beg pardon, sir. If I've said anything you don't like, sorry for it. It's because Mr. Surrey is so good an employer, and, if you'll let me say so, because I like you so well," glancing over him admiringly,—"for, you see, a good engineer takes to a clean-built machine wherever he sees it,—it's just because of this I thought it was better to tell you, and get you to tell the boss, and to save any row; for I'd hate mortally to have it in this shop where I've worked, man and boy, so many years. Will you please to speak to him, sir? and I hope you understand."
"Thank you, Jim. Yes, I understand; and I'll speak to him."
Was it that the sun was going down, or that some clouds were in the sky, or had the air of the shop oppressed him? Whatever it was, as he came out he walked with a slower step from which some of the spring had gone, and the people's faces looked not so happy; and, glancing down at his rosebud, he saw that its fair petals had been soiled by the smoke and grime in which he had been standing; and, while he looked a dead march came solemnly sounding up the street, and a soldier's funeral went by,—rare enough, in that autumn of 1860, to draw a curious crowd on either side; rare enough to make him pause and survey it; and as the line turned into another street, and the music came softened to his ear, he once more hummed the words of the song which had been haunting him all the day:—
"Then mounte! then mounte, brave gallants, all,
And don your helmes amaine;
Death's couriers, Fame and Honor, call
Us to the field againe,"—