"I thought me frind Casey 'd be taken up f'r histin' a polisman f'r
sure, though, to be fair with him, I niver knowed him to do but wan
arnychist thing, and that was to make faces at Willum Joyce because he
lived in a two-story an' bay-window brick house. Doolan said that was
goin' too far, because Willum Joyce usually had th' price. Wan day
Casey disappeared, an' I heerd he was married. He niver showed up f'r
a year; an', whin he come in, I hardly knowed him. His whiskers had
been filed an' his hair cut, an' he was dhressed up to kill. He wint
into th' back room, an' Doolan was asleep there. He woke him, an' made
a speech to him that was full iv slaughther and bloodshed. Pretty soon
in come a little woman, with a shawl over her head,--a little German
lady. Says she, 'Where's me hoosband?' in a German brogue ye cud cut
with an ax. 'I don't know ye'er husband, ma'am,' says I. 'What's his
name?' She told me, an' I seen she was Casey's wife; 'He's in there,'
I says. 'In back,' I says, 'talking to Doolan, th' prolotoorio.' I
wint back with her, an' there was Casey whalin' away. 'Ar-re ye men or
ar-re ye slaves?' he says to Doolan. 'Julius,' says his wife, 'vat ye
doin' there, ye blackgaard,' she says. 'Comin' ze, or be hivens I'll
break ye'er jaw,' she says. Well, sir, he turned white, an' come over
as meek as a lamb. She grabbed him be th' arm an' led him off, an'
'twas th' last I seen iv him.
"Afther a while Doolan woke up, an' says he, 'Where's me frind?'
'Gone,' says I. 'His wife came in, an' hooked him off.' 'Well,' says
Doolan, ''tis on'y another victhry iv the rulin' classes,' he says."
THE OPTIMIST.
"Aho," said Mr. Dooley, drawing a long, deep breath. "Ah-ho, glory be
to th' saints!"
He was sitting out in front of his liquor shop with Mr. McKenna, their
chairs tilted against the door-posts. If it had been hot elsewhere,
what had it been in Archey Road? The street-car horses reeled in the
dust from the tracks. The drivers, leaning over the dash-boards,
flogged the brutes with the viciousness of weakness. The piles of coke
in the gas-house yards sent up waves of heat like smoke. Even the
little girls playing on the sidewalks were flaming pink in color. But
the night saw Archey Road out in all gayety, its flannel shirt open at
the breast to the cooling blast and the cries of its children filling
the air. It also saw Mr. Dooley luxuriating like a polar bear, and
bowing cordially to all who passed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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