“The Reds copped again yesterday.”
“If you are referring to the raid on Anarchist Headquarters in Avenue C, I should have inferred that the Reds were copped, to use your term.”
Curt and contemptuous laughter was his response. “Don’t you ever read the papers, down here?”
“Certainly,” I retorted with some spirit, for the implied slur upon Our Square stung me. “In fact, I was reading one of our local publications when you inter—when you arrived. It contains some very interesting poetry.”
“Yeh?” said the hard, pink man politely.
“For example, in this issue I find the following apostrophe.” I proceeded to read aloud:
“Farewell, our dear one, we must part,
For thou hast gone to heavenly home,
While we below with aching heart
Must long for thee and ever moan.”
“Swell stuff,” commented the sharer of my bench, with determined interest. “Poetry’s a little out of my line, but I’m for it. Who wrote that?”
“It is signed ‘Loving Father and 3 Sisters.’ But the actual authorship rests with the long gentleman in black whom you see leaning on the park fence yonder. His name is Bartholomew Storrs and he is the elegiac or mortuary or memorial laureate of Our Square.”
This was said with intent to mortify the soul of my new acquaintance in revenge for his previous display of erudition. The bewilderment in his face told me that I had scored heavily. But he quickly rallied.