"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! but he's a grand jollier. And I thought
the man's eyes would drop out; I almost felt like holdin' out my hands
to catch 'em. And he says to my Pa, he says, 'Where do you come from?'
and Pa says, 'A free country,' he says, 'where every man gets a square
deal and can say what he likes.'
"Well, the man looked at him hard and he says, very sarkastic, he says,
'Where's that?'
"'Russia,' says Pa, and, say, you'd orter heard that man yell. Honest,
it made me sick at the stomach. Jimmy Duggan was just giving the
committee the last orders on the platform when that yell man cut loose.
Jimmy he looks around like he'd been shot, takes a flying leap off'n
the platform, and comes rushing down towards my Pa and the man with the
whiskers and the bulging eyes. And the man was yelling all the time
like the fans do at the baseball game when the score's a tie and the
home team's heavy hitter slugs the ball on the left ear for a home run.
And he was standing up pointing at Pa with a hand the size of a shovel,
and all the rest of the bunch around us was getting restless and
cacklin' furrin' talk.
"So when Jimmy gets up to the man with the steam whistle in his throat,
he grabs him by the whiskers, gives 'em a tug like he'd pull 'em off,
and he says pretty sharp, 'Sit down.' And the feller set, and just as
he did he opens his mouth to let out another yell, and Jimmy grabs a
cap from another man's head and sticks it in his mouth, and that
stopped him. So after he gets the cap out, Jimmy says, 'Now what's the
row?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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