New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
“‘Ah, señor,’ he snickers, ‘to the death you would have laughed at that
drollest Irish. I say to him: “Strong, big mans is need very much in
Guatemala.” “I will blows strike for your down-pressed country,” he
say. “That shall you do,” I tell him. Ah! it was an Irish so comic. He
sees one box break upon the wharf that contain for the guard a few gun.
He think there is gun in all the box. But that is all pickaxe. Yes. Ah!
señor, could you the face of that Irish have seen when they set him to
the work!’
“’Twas thus the ex-boss of the employment bureau contributed to the
tedium of the trip with merry jests and anecdote. But now and then he
would weep upon the bananas and make oration about the lost cause of
liberty and the mule.
“’Twas a pleasant sound when the steamer bumped against the pier in New
Orleans. Pretty soon we heard the pat-a-pat of hundreds of bare feet,
and the Dago gang that unloads the fruit jumped on the deck and down
into the hold. Me and the general worked a while at passin’ up the
bunches, and they thought we were part of the gang. After about an hour
we managed to slip off the steamer onto the wharf.
“’Twas a great honour on the hands of an obscure Clancy, havin’ the
entertainment of the representative of a great foreign filibusterin’
power. I first bought for the general and myself many long drinks and
things to eat that were not bananas. The general man trotted along at
my side, leavin’ all the arrangements to me. I led him up to Lafayette
Square and set him on a bench in the little park. Cigarettes I had
bought for him, and he humped himself down on the seat like a little,
fat, contented hobo. I look him over as he sets there, and what I see
pleases me. Brown by nature and instinct, he is now brindled with dirt
and dust. Praise to the mule, his clothes is mostly strings and flaps.
Yes, the looks of the general man is agreeable to Clancy.
“I ask him, delicate, if, by any chance, he brought away anybody’s
money with him from Guatemala. He sighs and bumps his shoulders against
the bench. Not a cent. All right. Maybe, he tells me, some of his
friends in the tropic outfit will send him funds later. The general was
as clear a case of no visible means as I ever saw.
“I told him not to move from the bench, and then I went up to the
corner of Poydras and Carondelet. Along there is O’Hara’s beat. In five
minutes along comes O’Hara, a big, fine man, red-faced, with shinin’
buttons, swingin’ his club. ’Twould be a fine thing for Guatemala to
move into O’Hara’s precinct. ’Twould be a fine bit of recreation for
Danny to suppress revolutions and uprisin’s once or twice a week with
his club.
“‘Is 5046 workin’ yet, Danny?’ says I, walkin’ up to him.
“‘Overtime,’ says O’Hara, lookin’ over me suspicious. ‘Want some of
it?’
“Fifty-forty-six is the celebrated city ordinance authorizin’ arrest,
conviction and imprisonment of persons that succeed in concealin’ their
crimes from the police.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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