ister? I thought boss was what you
little New-Yorkers generally said."

"I'm not a New-Yorker," announced the lad, with ready courtesy and good
nature. "I don't say boss. We are Southerners. I say mister."

He gave the man an unfavorable look as though of a mind to take his true
measure; also as being of a mind to let the man know that he had not
taken the boy's measure.

The man smiled at being corrected to such good purpose; but before he
could speak again, the lad went on to clinch his correction:

"And I only say mister when I am selling papers and am not at home."

"What do you say when not selling papers and when you are at home?"
asked the man, forced to a smile.

"I say 'sir,' if I say anything," retorted the lad, flaring up, but
still polite.

The man looked at him with increasing interest. Another word in the
lad's speech had caught his attention--Southerner.

That word had been with him a good deal in recent years; he had not
quite seemed able to get away from it. Nearly all classes of people in
New York who were not Southerners had been increasingly reminded that
the Southerners were upon them. He had satirically worked it out in his
own mind that if he were ever pushed out of his own position, it would
be some Southerner who pushed him. He sometimes thought of the whole New
York professional situation as a public wonderful awful dinner at which
almost nothing was served that did not have a Southern flavor as from a
kind of pepper. The guests were bound to have administered to them their
shares of this pepper; there was no getting away from the table and no
getting the pepper out of the dinner. There was the intrusion of the
South into every delicacy.

"We are Southerners," the lad had announced decisively; and there the
flavor was again, though this time as from a mere pepper-box in a school
basket. Thus his next remark was addressed to his own thoughts as well
as to the lad:

"And so _you_ are a Southerner!" he reflected audibly, looking down at
the Southern plague in small form.

"Why, yes, Mister, we are Southerners," replied the lad, with a gay and
careless patriotism; and as giving the handy pepper-box a shake, he
began to dust the air with its contents: "I was born on an old Southern
battle-field. When Granny was born there, it had hardly stopped smoking;
it was still piled with wounded and dead Northerners. Why, one of the
worst batteries was planted in our front porch."

This enthusia