Bardek brought the Italian laborers to the picnic supper. They demurred mightily at first, but Gorgas won them by a neat speech of invitation in Italian. How their eyes glistened, not for the good things to eat, although that must have touched them, but for the sound of that rich Italian speech.
“They are so hungry for words,” laughed Bardek; “the sound of your own language in a strange land—ah! that is sweet. One day I pass an ol’ woman wit’ bundle of sticks and she say, ‘Dam t’ose t’ings; t’ey won’t stay on my ol’ head’; but she say it in Czech, the clicking-clacking Czech which my mother spoke to me.” He burst into a strange rattle of exclamations. “That is the sweet Czech, my friends. It sounds not so sweet to you, eh? No? Your ear it is not right. Suppose you was in the middle of China and could never go to your home and, quick, you hear little children wit’ high American voice sing in the evening,
‘Here we go ’round the mulberry bush,
Mulberry bush, mulberry bush,
Here we go ’round the mulberry bush,
So early in the morning.’
“Ach! Gott, would you not cry?
“I did cry and hug that ol’ woman and tell her in her own Czech that I be long-gone son. And she believe me! I make her say, ‘Dam t’ose sticks,’ five, ten times and give her silver dollar for each time she speak. Ach! if she do not go mad after that! Somewhere in America is a crazy woman, all her life-time singing and shouting, ‘Dam t’ose sticks!’”
“We’ve caught you at last, Bardek,” Gorgas cried. “You are Czech! That’s what you are!”
“Oh, no!” he protested. “I am cosmopolitan. My mother, she was Czech when I was boy; but before t’at she was many t’ings; and after, many t’ings. I am cosmopolitan,” he claimed again. To Leopold and to Gorgas he spoke in French, to Blynn he made his remarks in German, and to the Italians he talked in their own tongue. The very timbre and rhythm of his voice changed with each language; he had the music of each in his head.