nd give us
a spiel.'

"And my Pa says, 'How much are you gettin' out of it, Jimmy?' he says.

"And Jimmy says, 'Far be it from me to bandy words with a hopeless
dyed-in-the-wool Tory,' he says, 'what's agoin' blindly to his crool
end,' he says, 'in spite of----'

"And then Ma butts in. 'That'll do for you, Jimmy Duggan,' she says.
'Both of them political parties is rotten,' she says, 'and you know it.'

"And Jimmy--Gee! but he's the great actor--he looks at Ma with a long
face on him, and he says, 'Madam,' he says, 'I admit that the party to
which my poor friend here belongs,' he says, 'is all to the bad. I
admit,' he says, 'that it has sunk----'

"And Ma says, 'Get out, Jimmy,' she says, 'and take Joe with you.'

"And Pa says, 'Ma,' he says, 'how about Willyum coming along,' and you
bet I'm listenin' hard that time.

"And Ma says, 'I'm afraid,' she says, 'about them 'Talians. S'pose
they got to fighting, anybody might stick a steeletter into the boy,'
she says.

"'Pardon me, madam,' says Jimmy, 'you are doing a great wrong,' he
says, 'to our noble feller citerzens----'

"And Ma gets up like she was in a kind of a hurry and she says if Pa
don't take Jimmy away she'll throw 'em both out, and Pa can take me to
the meeting. And we went.

"Say, you'd orter seen the bunch in that hall. I guess there was some
from every country on the map of Europe, and other places too we ain't
never dreamed of. It was a cold night, and they had the stove goin'.
Me and Pa, we sits near the door because Pa says that when the meetin'
gets agoin' they's no telling about what kind of a trouble there might
be in a hall like that, and it's us where we can slip out when we wants
to.

"Next to my Pa was a feller with whiskers a mile long, and pop eyes,
and when Jimmy Duggan left us and starts down to the platform this
feller says to Pa, 'Ain't he the great man!' he says.

"And my Pa says, 'He ain't so bad for a Swede.'

"And the man says, 'He ain't no Swede. No! Sir.'

"And my Pa says, 'Since when ain't he a Swede when he's born in
Swedeland?'

"'There ain't no such country,' says the man, 'you mean Sweden,' he
says, and my Pa says, 'I means just what I say,' he says.

"And the man looks at him and he says, 'Mister Duggan,' he says, 'is an
Irishman.'

"'With er name like that,' says my Pa, 'imposserble. 'Sides I never
heard of Irishmen. What country do they come from?' and, honest, my Pa
never batted an eyelid. Gee!