"How arre ye feelin', Teddy, b'y?" he often inquired of me during this period, with a greater show of interest in my troublesome health than ever before. I talked of leaving, I suppose, from time to time because sheer financial necessity was about to compel it.
"Fine, Rourke," I would say, "never better. I'm feeling better every day."
"That's good. Ye're the right man in the right place now. If ye was to sthay a year er two at this work it would be the makin' av ye. Ye're too thin. Ye need more chist," and he would tap my bony chest in a kindly manner. "I niver have a sick day, meself."
"That's right, Rourke," I replied pleasantly, feeling keenly the need of staying by so wonderful a lamp of health. "I intend to stick at it as long as I can."
"Ye ought to; it'll do ye good. If we get the new buildin' to build, it'll be better yet for ye. Ye'll have plenty to do there to relave yer mind."
"Relieve, indeed!" I thought, but I did not say so. On the contrary I felt so much sympathy for this lusty Irishman and his reasonable ambitions that I desired to help him, and urged him to get it. I suggested indirectly that I would see him through, which touched him greatly. He was a grateful creature in his way, but so excitable and so helplessly self-reliant that there was no way of aiding him without doing it in a secret or rather self-effacing manner. He would have much preferred to struggle along alone and fail, though I doubt whether real failure could have come to Rourke so essentially capable was he.
In another three weeks the work was really given him to do, and then began one of the finest exhibitions of Irish domination and self-sufficiency that I have ever witnessed. We moved to Mott Haven Yard, a great network of tracks and buildings, in the center of which this new building was to be erected. Rourke was given a large force of men, whom he fairly gloried in bossing. He had as many as forty Italians, to say nothing of a number of pseudo-carpenters and masons (not those shrewd hawks clever enough to belong to the union, but wasters and failures of another type) who did the preliminary work of digging for the foundation, etc. Handling these, Rourke was in his element. He loved to see so much brisk work going on. He would trot to and fro about the place, beaming in the most angelic fashion, and shouting orders that could be heard all over the neighborhood. It was delicious to watch him. At times he would stand by the long trenches where the men were digging for the foundation, a great line of them, their backs bent over their work, and rub his hands in pleasingly human satisfaction, saying, "We're goin' along fine, Teddy. I can jist see me way to the top av the buildin'," and then he would proceed to harass and annoy his men out of pure exuberance of spirits.
"Ye waant to dig it so, man," or, "Ye don't handle yer pick right; can't ye see that? Hold it this way." Sometimes he would get down in the trench and demonstrate just how it was to be done, a thing which greatly amused some of the workmen. Frequently he would exhibit to me little tricks or knacks of his trade, such as throwing a trowel ten feet so that it would stick in a piece of wood; turning a shovel over with a lump of dirt on it and not dropping the lump, and similar simple acts, always adding, "Ye'll niver be a mason till ye can do that."
When he was tired of fussing with the men outside he would come around to the little wooden shed, where I was keeping the mass of orders and reports in shape and getting his material ready for him, and look over the papers in the most knowing manner. When he had satisfied himself that everything was going right, he would exclaim, "Ye're jist the b'y fer the place, Teddy. Ye'd made a good bookkeeper. If ever I get to be Prisident, I'll make ye me Sicretary av State."
But the thing which really interested and enthralled Rourke was the coming of the masons—those hardy buccaneers of the laboring world who come and go as they please, asking no favors and brooking no interference. Plainly he envied them their reckless independence at the same time that he desired to control their labor in his favor—a task worthy of the shrewdest diplomat. Never in my life have I seen such a gay, ruthless, inconsiderate point of view as these same union masons represented, a most astounding lot. They were—are, I suppose I should say—our modern buccaneers and Captain Kidds of the laboring world, demanding, if you please, their six a day, starting and stopping almost when they please, doing just as little as they dare and yet face their own decaying conscience, dropping any task at the most critical and dangerous point, and in other ways rejoicing in and disporting themselves in such a way as to annoy the representatives of any corporation great or small that suffered the sad compulsion of employing them. Seriously, I am not against union laborers. I like them. They spell rude, blazing life. But when you have to deal with them!