"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.
"So here ye arre at last," he said with a grin.
"Yes," I laughed.