“It will be done within five years, maybe within two,” she asserted positively.
Though that little woman was the third generation born in the United States, she took it as an insult to be referred to as an American. And the threats she used to breathe against the Democratic Party. Until I met her I had fancied that all my fellow citizens with Irish blood in their veins were devoted Democrats. She strangled that belief.
She was something of a character, that young woman. She possessed considerable musical talent and the promise of a good voice. Her family, with much self-denial, had managed to send her to Rome in the hope of her becoming a singer in grand opera.
As time wore on the people in my district got to know me and talk more freely. I soon learned that the idea of the Pope in Ireland was not a figment of the music-teacher’s imagination. I was told repeatedly that within a few years he would be moved to Ireland.
Soon after I went to live in the tenement on East Thirty-first Street I got an even greater surprise. One Saturday afternoon a small, quietly dressed woman appeared at the entrance of my little flat—the upper half of the door being open she stood on the piazza. She asked for a contribution to build a church and explained that she was taking from five cents up.
Now I believe in the moral influence of a church building. Even though the minister may not be of much significance I have found that in nine cases out of ten having a church in a neighborhood lifts the tone. While working for the A. S. P. C. A. I seldom passed a church in the tenements without stepping in, even when I did not have time to sit down.
While I was getting my pocketbook the little woman at the door told me about the church for which she was begging. It was to be the grandest in the world, to cost more than a hundred million of dollars. It was to be located at Washington, D. C. Then she added:
“The Pope is coming over to dedicate it. When he comes he’ll never go back.”
I handed her twenty-five cents and told her that I hoped she would see to it that I got a seat in case I was able to be present at the dedication. She thanked me for my contribution, but very wisely, I thought, refrained from promising me a seat. And I refrained from telling her that I was not a child of the Pope’s.
After that many a time and oft I was assured that the Pope would come to live in the United States. For days after the smashing of the windows of the Union Club the tenements boiled. The Irish were in transports of triumph. The United States was only a “Greater Ireland,” and the Pope would surely come over here to live.