t with it!
Back with it! In with it! Out with it!" all coupled with his favorite
expletive, "Jasus Christ," which was as innocent of evil, I subsequently
came to know, as a prayer. In short, he was simply wild Irish, and that
was all there was to him--a delightful specimen, like Namgay Doola.

But, as I say, at the time he seemed positively appalling to me, a
virulent specimen, and I thought, "The Irish brute! To think of human
beings having to work for a brute like that! To think of his driving men
like that!" However, I soon began to discover that he was not so bad as
he seemed, and then I began to like him.

The thing that brought about this swift change of feeling in me was the
attitude of his men toward him. Although he was so insistent with his
commands, they did not seem to mind nor to strain themselves working.
They were not killing themselves, by any means. He would stand over
them, crying, "Up with it! Up with it! Up with it! Up with it!" or "Down
with it! Down with it! Down with it!" until you would have imagined
their nerves would be worn to a frazzle. As it was, however, they did
not seem to care any more than you would for the ticking of a clock;
rather, they appeared to take it as a matter of course, something that
had to be, and that one was prepared for. Their steps were in the main
as leisurely as those of idlers on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. They
carried boards or stone as one would objects of great value. One could
not help smiling at the incongruity of it; it was farcical. Finally
gathering the full import of it all, I ventured to laugh, and he turned
on me with a sharp and yet not unkindly retort.

"Ha! ha! ha!" he mocked. "If ye had to work as hard as these min, ye
wouldn't laugh."

I wanted to say, "Hard work, indeed!" but instead I replied, "Is that
so? Well, I don't see that they're killing themselves, or you either.
You're not as fierce as you sound."

Then I explained that I was not laughing at them but at him, and he took
it all in good part. Since I was only a nominal laborer here, not a real
one--permitted to work for my health, for twelve cents an hour--we fell
to conversing upon railroad matters, and in this way our period of
friendship began.

As I learned that morning, Rourke was the foreman-mason for minor tasks
for all that part of the railroad that lay between New York and fifty
miles out, on three divisions. He had a dozen or so men under him and
was in possession of one car,