University of Virginia Library

The Mighty Burke by Theodore Dreiser
Illustrations by Jay Hambidge

WHEN I first met him he was laying the foundation for a small dynamo in the engine-room of the repair-shop at Spike; and he was most unusually loud in his protestations and demands. He had with him a dozen Italians, all short, swarthy fellows who were busy bringing material from a car that had been pushed in on the side-track next to the building, and was loaded with crushed stone, cement, old boards, wheelbarrows, tools, and the like, all of which were to be used in the labor that he was about to undertake. He himself was standing in the door of the shop where the operation was to be conducted, his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, shouting with true Irish insistence: "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Get the shovels, now! Get the picks! Bring some sand here! Bring some stones. Where is the cement, now? Where is the cement? Jasus Christ! I must have some cement! What are ye all doing? Hurry now. Hurry! Bring the cement!" and then calmly gazing around as if he were the only one who had any right to stand still in this world. He was medium in height, thick of body and neck, with short gray hair and mustache, and bright, clear, twinkling Irish gray eyes, and he carried himself with such an air of unquestionable authority that you would have had to take notice of him. It was much as if he had said, "I am the boss here"; and, indeed, he was.

The labor he was doing was not very intricate, but it was interesting. It consisted of digging a trench ten by twelve feet, and shaping it up with boards into a "form," after which concrete was to be mixed and poured in, and some iron rods set to fasten the engine to. It was not so urgent but that it might have been conducted with less excitement; but he was so excitable by nature, and so eager to have it done with, that he was constantly trotting back and forth, and shouting: "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie! Hurry, now, bring the shovels," and occasionally bursting forth with a perfect avalanche of orders, such as, "Up with it! Down with it! Front 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 as a prayer. At the time it seemed positively appalling to me, and I thought, "The Irish brute! To think of his driving his men like that." But a little later I discovered that he was not so bad as he seemed, and then I began to like him.

The thing that brought about this 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. 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! Down with it!" until you would have imagined their nerves would be worn to a frazzle. And yet, they did not seem to care; rather, they appeared to take it as a matter of course, as if it had to be. One could not help smiling at the incongruity of it; it was so farcical. Finally I ventured to laugh, and he turned on me with a sharp and yet not unkindly retort.

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" he mocked. "If you had to work as hard as these men, you wouldn't laugh!"

I explained that I was not laughing at them, but at him, and he took that in good part also. We fell to conversing upon railroad subjects, and in this way our period of friendship began.

As I learned that morning, Burke was the foreman mason for all that part of the railroad that lay between New York and fifty miles out, on three divisions. He had a dozen men under him, and was in possession of one car, which was shunted back and forth between the places in which he happened to be working. He was the builder of concrete platforms, culverts, coalbins, sidewalks, and, in fact, anything that could be made out of crushed stone and cement, and he was sent here and there, as necessity required. As he explained to me at the time, he sometimes arose as early as 4 A. M. in order to make a train that would get him to his place of labor by seven. Darkness or storm made no difference to him. "Shewer, I have to be there," he said, with his quizzical, elusive Irish grin. "They're not payin' me wages fer lyin' in bed. If ye were to get up that way every day fer a year, it would make a man of ye."

"And how much do you get, Burke?" I asked.

"Two and a half a day."

The munificence of the corporation that paid him two and a half a day for ten hours' work, as well as the superintendence and construction of what he was doing, struck me forcibly, though I was not much better situated myself at the time. I was working on the road for my health, at fifteen cents an hour, and the sight of the foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was a loud-mouthed, blustering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out from under him. Since I had influence enough to obtain a transfer to any foreman who would accept me, I decided to appeal to Burke.

"Will you take me and let me work for you?"

I asked hopefully.

"Shewer," he replied.

"Will I have to work with the Italians?"

"There'll be plenty uv work fer ye to do without ever yere layin' a hand to a pick er shovel. Shewer, that's no work fer a white man to do."

"And what do you call them, Burke?"

"Nagurs, uv course."

"But they're not negroes."

"Well, bedad, they're not white. That any man can tell by lookin' at thim."

I accepted this characterization of the sturdy, hard-working Italians without protest, though it struck me as a little hard. They were not the degraded creatures he seemed to take them to be, and yet I felt that there was no malice in what he said; it was his way, and I let it pass, deciding to go with him if I could—and I did.

The day that I was transferred to his flock, or gang, he was at Williamsbridge, a little station on the Harlem, building a coal-bin. It was a pretty place surrounded by trees and a grassplot, which, after the long confinement of the shop, seemed to me a veritable haven of rest. The sun was shining brightly, and Burke was down in a cool hole which his men had dug under the depot platform, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, when I looked in on him.

"So here ye ar-re," he said, with a grin.

"Yes," I laughed.

"Well, ye're jist in time; I want ye to go down to the ahffice."

I replied that I was willing, but, before I could say more, he climbed out of his hole, odorous of the new-turned earth that had surrounded him, and fished out of the pocket of his old gray coat a soiled and crumpled letter, which he carefully unfolded with his thick, clumsy fingers. Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly.

"I want ye to go to Woodlawn," he continued, "and look after some bolts that ar-re up there,— there's a keg uv thim,—and sign the bill fer thim, and ship thim down to me. They're not many. And then I want ye to go down to the ahffice and take thim this o. k." He fished around and produced another crumpled slip, which I saw was an o. k. blank. All the time he kept talking of the "nonsinse" of it, and the "onraisonableness" of demanding o. k.'s for everything. "Ye'd think some one was going to sthale thim from thim," he declared.

It was plain that some infraction of the railroad's rules had occurred, and that he had been "called down" or "jacked up" about it, as the railroad men expressed it. He was in a high state of dudgeon, and defiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow. He flung a parting shot at his superior as I departed.

I departed on my way, knowing that no such message would be accepted, and that Burke would not send it if he thought for a moment

that I would take it. I went to Woodlawn and secured the bolts, after which I went down to the "ahffice" and reported. There I found the chief clerk also in a high state of temper, because Burke had failed to render an o. k. for the bolts for a whole month and more. He wanted to know what explanation he had to offer, and when I suggested that he thought he could leave them in the station, where they would be safe, until he needed to use them, he was fairly beside himself.

"What do you think of that?" he exclaimed, shoving his hands distractedly through his hair. "He'll leave them there until he needs them, will he? Burke ought to know better than that. He's been long enough on the road. You tell him that I said that I want a signed form for everything consigned to him the moment he learns that it's waiting for him, and I want it without fail. He has got to come to time about this, or something's going to drop. I'm not going to stand it any longer. How does he think I am going to make out my reports? I wish he'd let you attend to these matters while you're there. It will save an awful lot of trouble in this office, and it may save him his job. There's one thing sure: he's got to come to time from now on, or either he or I'll quit." And then he explained to me the difference that existed between him and the hearty Irishman.

It seemed—as I learned from him then, and from Burke later, though never directly from the latter—that the great difficulty of the Irishman's life was in connection with these o. k.'s and some twenty-five monthly reports that he was compelled to make, covering every detail of his work, from the acknowledgment of all material received to the expenditure of even so much as one mill's worth of paper. They were the things on which his superior based his reports to those above him, and the details of them were looked after sharply. If a man could not sit down and reel off a graphic account of all that he was doing, accompanied by facts and figures, he was in a bad way with his superiors, no matter what his mechanical skill might be; whereas, if his reports were clear, the insufficiency of his skill might sometimes be overlooked. Burke was not skilled in these matters, though he was an A-1 workman, and consequently his standing was not of the best, particularly with the chief clerk. The clerk was a dapper, very self-important individual to whom railroad work meant figuring, and he was constantly

hammering away at the excitable Irishman to get him to "come to time," as he expressed it.

It also seemed that, at the time when I dawned upon Burke, he was just at the place where, for some reason or another, he was having a very bad spell of this. Several items of various kinds had gone wrong, and he was being bombarded with letters bearing the most significant insults to and reflections upon his intelligence, coupled with the most urgent commands, which tried his temper sorely. The compilation of his reports and time-books had become a veritable nightmare, and, when I arrived, he was not only employing all of his nights and Sundays, but also the services of his three daughters. Nevertheless and notwith-standing all this, he was constantly making mistakes, and as constantly being "jacked up" about them. It was a serious matter.

When I returned, that day, I was very well aware of the situation, but I did not care to take the unwelcome message back to him. On the contrary, I decided that it would be better to take the clerical work into my own hands— to find out what was wanted in this line and to do it. I knew that I could not very well work with a pick and shovel, and this was about all that was left outside of that. Consequently, when I returned, I quietly explained that an o. k. blank was what was always wanted under such circumstances, and that it was wanted at once.

"An o. k. blank! An o. k. blank!" he echoed contentiously. "He wants an o. k. blank, does he? Well, I expect ye might as well give it to him. I think the man lives on thim things, the way he's a-always ca-allin' fer thim. Ye'd think I was a bookkeeper and foreman at the same time; it's somethin' awful. An o. k. blank!"

A little while later he humorously explained that he had "clane fergot thim, anyhow."

The ensuing month was a busy one for us. We had a platform to lay at Morrisania, a chimney to build at Tarrytown, a sidewalk to lay at White Plains, and a large cistern to dig and wall in at Tuckahoe. Besides these, there were platforms to build at Van Cortlandt and Mount Kisco, water-towers at Highbridge and Ardsley, a sidewalk and drain at Caryl, a culvert and an ash-pit at Bronx Park, and some forty concrete piers for a building at Melrose—all of which required any amount of running and figuring, to say nothing of the actual work of superintending and constructing, which Burke personally looked after. The preliminary labor of ordering and seeing that the material was duly shipped and unloaded was one man's work alone; and yet, Burke was expected to do it all. How he managed before I came I could make out only on the basis that he accomplished less, and employed his whole family.

However, he displayed himself a masterful workman. He preferred to superintend—to get down into the pit or up on the wall, and measure and direct. He would toil for hours at a stretch with his trowel and his line and his level and his plumb-bob, getting the work into shape, and you would never hear a personal complaint from him concerning the weariness of labor; on the contrary, he would whistle and sing until something went wrong, when suddenly you would hear the most terrific uproar of words: "Come out of that! Come out of that! Jasus Christ, man, have ye no sinse at all? Put it down! Put it down! What ar-re ye doing? What did I tell ye? Have ye no raison in ye, ye h'athen nagur!" and such like, until you would have imagined that the most terrible calamity had been about to befall him. This would last for a couple of minutes, during which time the Italians would be seen hurrying excitedly to and fro; and then there would come a lull, and Burke would be heart to raise his voice in tuneful melody, singing or humming or whistling some old-fashioned Irish "come-all-ye."

But the thing in Burke that would have pleased any one was his ready grasp of the actualities of life—his full-fledged knowledge that work was the thing, the direct accomplishment of something tangible, and not the talking about it. Thus, when he was working like this, nothing that might concern the clerical end of the labor could disturb him, and, if the sky fell, he would imperturbably make you wait until the work was done. Once, when I interrupted him to question him concerning those wretched, pestering aftermaths of labor, the reports, he shut me off with: "The reports! The reports! What good ar-re the reports? What have the reports to do with the work? If it wasn't for the work, where would the reports be?" And I readily echoed, "Where?"

Another thing was his kindly attitude toward his men—that innate sense of personal relationship and fatherly feeling which, in spite of all his yelling and browbeating, kept them friendly to him. He had a way of talking to them and of saying kindly things to them in a joking manner which touched them. When he arrived in the morning, it was always in the cheeriest way that he began the day's work. "Come, now, b'ys!" he would exclaim. "Ye have a good day's work before ye to-day. Git the shovels, Jimmie. Bring the line, Matt." And then he would go below himself,—if below it was,—and there would be joy and peace until some obstacle to progress interfered.

This same Matt was a funny little Italian,

soft of voice and gentle of manner, whom Burke liked very much, but with whom he loved to quarrel. He would go down in the hole where the latter was working, and almost invariably you would hear the most uproarious clatter following immediately—shouts of: "Put it here, I say! Put it here, man. Here. Here! Jasus Christ! have ye no sinse at all?"—coupled, of course, with defiant replies from Matt, who had been with him so long that he was not in the least overawed by his yelling, and could afford to take such liberties. Presently Burke would come climbing out of the hole, his face and neck fairly scarlet with heat, raging and shouting: "I'll get shut uv ye. I'll have no more thruck with ye, ye blitherin', crazy loon. What good ar-re ye? What work can ye do? Na-athing! I'll have no more thruck with ye after to-night." Then he would dance around and threaten and growl until something else would take his attention, and then he would quiet down and be as peaceful as ever. Sometimes he would go home without saying a word to Matt, who would reappear as unconcernedly in the morning as if nothing had happened. Once I asked him, "How many times have you threatened to discharge Matt in the last three years, Burke?"

"Shewer," he said, with his ingratiating grin, "a man don't mane a-all he says a-all the time."

The most humorous of all his collection of workingmen was Jimmie, a dark, mild-eyed soft-spoken Calabrian who had the shrewdness of a Machiavelli and the pertness of a crow. He lived in the same neighborhood as Burke (he kept all his Italians gathered close about him), and was always the one who was selected to run his family errands for him. On the job, no matter what it might be, Jimmie could never be induced to do hard work. He always had a task of some other kind on hand which he used as an excuse, and, as he was an expert cement-mixer and knew just how to load and unload the tool-car, nothing was ever said to him. If any one dared to reprove him, he would reply: "Yeh! Yeh! I know-a my biz. I been now with Misha Buck fifteen year. I know-a my biz." If you made any complaint to Burke, he would merely grin and say, "Jimmie's a shrewd one," or, perhaps, "I'll get ye yet, ye fox"; but more than that nothing was ever done.

One day, however, Jimmie failed to comply with an extraordinary order of Burke's, which produced a most laughable and yet characteristic scene. We had been working on the platform at Williamsbridge, digging a coal-bin, when a train came along bearing the general foreman, who got off to examine the work that had been done. It was a rule of the company that no opening of any kind into which a person might step or fall should be left uncovered at any

station, during the approach, stay, or departure of any train scheduled to stop at that station. Burke was well aware of this rule. He had a copy of it on file in his collection of circulars. In addition, he had delegated Jimmie to attend to this matter, a task that just suited the Italian, as it gave him ample time to idle about and pretend to be watching.

On this particular occasion Jimmie had failed to attend to this matter. When the train approached, there was the hole wide open, with Burke below, shouting and gesticulating about something. The general foreman came forward, looked down, and said quietly: "This won't do, Burke. You'll have to keep the work covered when a train is approaching." Burke looked up, so astonished and ashamed that he should be put in such a position before his superior that he hardly knew what to say. Instead of trying to answer, he merely began to shout for Jimmie, who came running, crying, as he always did, "What's da mat'?"

"'What's da mat'! What's da mat'!'" mocked Burke, in his fury. "What the divil do you suppose is the mat'? What do you mane by walkin' away and l'avin' the hole uncovered? Didn't I tell ye niver to l'ave a hole open when a train's comin'? Didn't I tell ye to attind to that and na-athing else? What, be all the powers, d'ye mane by l'avin' it? What else have ye to do? What else ar-re ye good fer? What d'ye mane by lettin' a thing like that happen?"

Jimmie was dumfounded. He did not know what to say, but he began to stutter and stam-mer about going for a trowel.

"A trowel!" cried Burke. "A trowel, ye h'athen guinea! What ud ye be doin' lookin' fer a trowel, and a train that close on ye it could have knocked ye off the track? A trowel, is it? I'll trowel ye! Git thim boards on, and let me catch ye l'avin' such a place as that open again. I'll get shut uv ye, ye blitherin' lunatic."

During this entire tirade Jimmie had been industriously hustling the boards into place, while the passengers, who had gathered about, looked on in astonishment. When it was all over, and the train, bearing the general foreman, had gone, Burke quieted down, but not without many fulgurous flashes that kept the poor Italian on tenterhooks.

About an hour later another train arrived, and, by some strange fatality, the hole was open again. Jimmie was away behind the depot somewhere, and Burke was, as usual, down in the hole. Misfortune trebled itself by bringing the supervisor himself, a grave, quiet man, of whom Burke stood in great awe. He walked up to the hole, and, looking reproachfully down, said: "Is this the way you leave your excavations, Burke, when a train is coming? Don't you know any better than to do a thing like that?"

"Jimmie!" Burke shouted, jumping up and climbing out. "Jimmie! Now, by —! where is that bla'guard Italian? I told him not to l'ave this place open." And he began shoving the planks into place himself.

Jimmie came running as fast as his legs would carry him, scared almost out of his wits. The excitable foreman was so enraged and ashamed, however, that he could not speak. His face and neck were fiery red and his eyes flashed with anger. He merely glared at his recalcitrant henchman, as much as to say, "Wait." When the next train had arrived, and the dignified supervisor had been carried safely out of hearing, he turned on Jimmie with all the fury of a masterful and excitable temper: "So ye'll naht cover the hole, after me tellin' ye naht fifteen minutes ago! Ye'll naht cover the hole! And what'll ye be tellin' me ye were doin' now?"

"I carry da waut [water] for da concrete," pleaded Jimmie weakly.

"Waut fer the concrete," echoed Burke, with his angry face shoved close to the Italian's own. "Waut fer the concrete! It's too bad ye didn't fall into y'r waut fer the concrete and drown, ye flat-footed, loon-headed nagur! Waut fer the concrete, is it, and me here, and a train comin', and the hole open. Waut fer the concrete, and Mr. Mills steppin' off and lookin' in on me, ye black-hearted son of a sea-cook, ye! I'll waut fer the concrete ye! I'll crack y'r blitherin' Eyetalian skull with a pick, I will! I'll chuck ye in y'r waut fer the concrete until ye choke, ye round-eyed, leather-headed lunatic! I'll tache ye to walk off and l'ave the hole open, and me in it. Now, get y'r coat and get out uv this. I'll throuble no more with ye. I'll have no more thruck with ye. Out with ye, and never show me y'r face again!" And he made a motion as if he would grab him and rend him limb from limb.

Jimmie was too clever, however. He had evidently been through many such scenes before. He retreated behind the depot, and, when Burke had gone to work, came back and took a position on guard over the hole. When the next train came, he was there to shove the boards over, and nothing more was said about the matter: Burke did not appear to notice him. The next morning he came to work as usual, and it was, "Come, Matt! Come, Jimmie!" just as if nothing had happened.

It was not so very long after I arrived that Burke began to tell me of a building that the company was going to erect in Mott Haven Yard, one of its great switching centers. It was to be an important affair, sixty by two hundred

feet, of brick and stone, and was to be built under a time limit of three months, an arrangement by which the company hoped to find out how satisfactorily it could do work for itself, that is, without letting it to outside contractors. From his manner and conversation I could see that Burke was anxious to get this job, for he had been a contractor of some ability in his day, and felt a little above the small odds and ends of masonry that he was now called on to do. He was anxious to show the company that he could build this building and thus make a little better place for himself in the company's estimation; but, at the same time, he was a little afraid of the clerical details, those terrible nightmares of reports.

"How ar-re ye feelin', Teddy b'y?" he would inquire, with a great show of interest in my troublesome health.

"Fine, Burke," I would say. "I'm feeling better every day."

"That's good. Ye're the right man in the right place now. If ye were to stay a year or two at this work it would be the makin' uv ye. I never have a sick day, meself."

"That's right, Burke; I intend to stick at it for a while."

"Ye ought to; it'll do ye good. If we get the new buildin' to build, it will be better yet fer ye. Ye'll have plenty to do there to relave y'r mind."

"Relieve, indeed!" I thought, but I did not say so. On the contrary, I felt so much sympathy for the lusty Irishman and his reasonable ambitions that I desired to help him, and urged him to get it. I suggested indirectly that I would see him through, which touched him greatly. He was a grateful creature, in his way, but so excitable and so helplessly self-reliant that there was no way of aiding him without doing it in a secret, or rather self-effacing way. He would have much preferred to struggle along and fail—though I doubt whether real failure could have come to Burke—rather than openly admit that he needed aid.

In another three weeks the work was really given him to do, and then began one of the finest exhibitions of Irish domination and self-sufficiency that was ever witnessed. We moved to Mott Haven Yard, the clerical details were intrusted to me, and Burke was given a large force of men, whom he fairly gloried in bossing. He would trot to and fro about the place, beaming in the most angelic fashion, and shouting orders that could be heard all over the neighborhood. At times he would stand by the long trenches where the men were digging,—we had forty of them in line now,— and rub his hands in satisfaction, saying, "I can just see me way to the top of the buildin'"; and then he would proceed to harass and annoy his men out of pure exuberance of spirits.

"Ye want to dig it so, man," or "Ye don't handle yer pick right; hold it this way." Sometimes he would get down in the trench and demonstrate just how it was to be done, a thing that greatly amused some of the workmen. Frequently he would exhibit to me little tricks or knacks of his trade, such as throwing a trowel ten feet so that it would stick in a piece of wood, turning a shovel over with a lump of dirt on it and not dropping the lump, and such like, always adding, "Ye'll never be a mason till ye can do that."

When he was tired of fussing with the men outside, he would come around to the little wooden shed where I was keeping the mass of orders and reports in shape and getting his material for

him ready to his hand, and look over the papers in the most knowing manner. When he had satisfied himself that everything was going right, he would exclaim, "Ye're just the b'y fer the place, Teddy. Ye'd make a good bookkeeper. If ever I get to be President, I'll make ye me Secretary uv State."

The thing that interested and enthralled Burke was the coming of the masons. These hardy buccaneers of the laboring world, who come and go as they please, asking no favors and brooking no interference, excited his most admiring and pugnacious fancy. It promised him the opportunity he inmostly desired of once more fussing and fuming with real, strong, determined, and pugnacious men like himself, who would not take his onslaughts tamely, but would fight him back; and he was never weary of talking of them. "Wait till the masons come, Teddy b'y," he would say to me. "Wait till we have thirty er forty men on the line! Them's the times ye'll see what ixcitement manes, me b'y."

"What'll I see, Burke?" I used to ask. "Throuble enough. They're not crapin' Eyetalians, that'll let ye talk to thim as ye pl'ase. Ye'll have to fight with thim fellies."

"Do you think you can handle them, Burke?" I would ask, with a great show of trepidation.

"Handle thim!" he would exclaim, his glorious wrath kindling in anticipation of possible conflict. "Handle thim! And the likes of a thousand uv thim. I know thim all, every one of thim, and their thricks. It's naht foolin' me they'll be. Ah, me b'y, it's a fine job ye'll have runnin' down to the ahffice gittin' thim their time." (This is the railroad man's expression for money due, or salary.)

"You don't mean to say you're going to discharge them, Burke, do you?" I said.

"Shewer!" he exclaimed, authoritatively. "Why shouldn't I? They're just the same as other min. Why shouldn't I?" Then he added, after a pause: "It's thim that'll be comin' to me askin' fer their time, instead of me givin' it to thim. They're not the kind that'll let ye talk back to thim. If their work don't suit ye, it's 'Give me me time.' Wait till they'll be comin' round half drunk in the mornin', er not feelin' quite right. Thim's the times ye'll find out what masons ar-re made of."

I confess this opportunity did not seem to me as brilliant as it did to him, but it had its humor. I expressed wonder that he would hire them, if they were such a bad lot.

"Shewer, they have a right to do as they pl'ase," he said instantly, jumping to their defense. "It's no common workmen they are. If ye were in their place, ye'd do the same. There's no sinse in allowin' another man to walk on ye when ye can get another job. I don't blame thim. I was a mason wanst meself."

"You don't mean to say that you acted as you say these men are going to act?"

"Shewer!"

"Well, I shouldn't think you'd be very proud of it."

"I have me rights," he declared, flaring up. "What kind uv a man is it that'll let himself be walked on? There's no sinse in it. It's not natchral. It's not intinded that it should be so."

Well, the masons came, and a fine lot they were. For the most part, they were clean, industrious fellows, but so obstreperously conscious of their own rights, and so proud of their skill as masons, that there was no living with them. They wanted, "first off," as the railroad men used to say, to know whether there were any non-union men on the job, and this gave Burke several splendid opportunities for altercations, which he hastened to improve. Then they wanted to know when they were to get their money, and this led to more trouble, as the railroad paid only once a month. After that there came bickerings on all conceivable subjects: the number of bricks they were to lay an hour; the number of men they were to carry on one line, or wall; the length of time they were supposed to work, or had worked, or would work—all of which were pure food and drink to Burke. He was around all the time, and calling to some mason to come down, that he would give him his time. Frequently he would come rushing into the office, the defiant mason at his heels, demanding that I make out a time-check at once, which I would. Occasionally he would patch up a truce with the man, but not often. As a rule, they were as eager to quit and get the money due them as he was to have them, and more so. It was all like a scene out of comic opera.

Toward the last, however, a natural calm set in, the result of weariness and a sense of surfeit, which sent the building forward apace. During this time Burke was to be seen walking defiantly up and down in front of his men, his hands behind his back, his face screwed up into a quizzical expression, and his whole body bearing a look of bristling pugnacity that was delicious to see. He could not say much, things were going so well, but he could look his contentiousness, and he did. Even now he would occasionally manage to pick a quarrel that resulted in the customary descent to the office, but not often.

It was one cold December day about three weeks later, when I was just about to announce that I could not delay my departure any longer, that a most dreadful accident occurred. Burke and a number of Italians, including Matt and Jimmie, were down in the main room of the building, looking after the laying of three concrete piers that were to support three columns intended to reinforce the second floor, where heavy storing was to be done, when the boiler of the hoisting-engine, which was located inside the building and just at the juncture of three walls, blew up and knocked the middle section of the wall opposite out into the middle of the great room. It also let down the wall from the space above it, which dislocated fourteen floor-joists, and precipitated all of fourteen thousand bricks that had been placed on the third floor into this room below. For a few moments there was a hurricane of bricks and falling timber; and, when it was over, the mighty Burke and five Italians were found to be embedded, and all but Jimmie more or less seriously injured. Burke, in particular, was unfortunately placed. His body from the waist down was surrounded by a pile of bricks, and across his shoulder a great joist was pressing where it had struck him and cut his neck and ear. He was a pathetic sight when we entered, grim and bleeding, but undaunted.

"I'm right fast, me lad," he said, as I with others came hurrying up. "It's me legs that's caught, not me body. Give a hand to the men, there. The Eyetalians are underneath."

Disregarding his suggestion, we began working at him, every man throwing away bricks like a machine; but he would not have it.

"Tend to the men!" he exclaimed, with a touch of his old firmness. "The Eyetalians are under there—Matt and Jimmie. Jasus Christ! can't ye see that I'm all right? Look after the men. I'll be all right till you get the men out. Come, look after the men!"

We fell to this end of the work then, for there was no gainsaying him; and, while we did so, Burke stood embedded in his mass of material, directing us. A fabled giant he seemed, half god, half man, composed in part of flesh, in part of brick and stone, and gazing on our little earthly efforts with the eye of a demi-god.

"Come, now. Get the joist from off the end, there. Take the bricks away from that man. Can't ye see? There's where his head is— there. There! Jasus Christ—theyer!"

You would have thought we were Italians ourselves, and compelled to do his bidding.

After a time we succeeded in releasing all five of the men—Matt badly cut about the head and seriously injured; and Jimmie, the imperturbable Jimmie, a little bit the worse for a brick mark on one shoulder but otherwise unharmed, and sitting calmly under a shielding joist that had fallen over the hole in which he was digging. He was more or less scared, of course, but comic to look at, even in his fright. "Big-a smash," he exclaimed, when he recovered himself. "Lika da worl' fall. Misha Buck! Misha Buck! Where Misha Buck?"

"Here I am, ye Eyetalian scalawag," exclaimed the unyielding Irishman, genially, but

with a touch of sorrow in his voice at that. "Are ye hurted much?"

"No, Misha Buck. Help Misha Buck," replied Jimmie, grabbing at bricks himself; and so the rescue work began in that quarter.

Even here, however, the peculiar domineering quality of the man's nature was not to be done away with. He deprecated our efforts, this wonderful and exceptional fuss over him, and when we tugged frantically at joists and beams, he interfered with contentious but what he no doubt deemed salutary objections. "Take your time. Take your time. I'm not so badly fixed as all that. Take your time. Get that board out of the way there, Jimmie."

But he was badly "fixed." His hip was severely crushed by the timbers, and his legs broken, and it was only when we had removed all the bricks that we saw how desperate his condition really was. He was so seriously crushed that he could not stand, and had to be laid out on the canvas tarpaulin which the yard-master had spread on the brick-strewn ground while the doctors of the ambulance worked over him. While they were examining his desperate wounds, he took a critical and quizzical interest in what they were doing, and offered numerous suggestions. Finally, when they were ready to move him, he asked how he was, and, on being told that he was all right, looked curiously around until he caught my eye. I could see that he realized how critical it was with him.

"I'd like to see a priest, Teddy," he whispered; "and, if ye don't mind, I'd like ye to go up to Mount Vernon and tell my wife. They'll be after telegraphin' her if ye don't. Break it easy, if you will. Don't let her think there's anything serious. There's no need of it. I'm not hurted so bad as all that."

I promised, and the next moment one of the doctors shot a spray of cocaine into his hip to relieve what they knew must be his dreadful pain. A few moments later he lost consciousness, after which I left him to the care of the hospital authorities, and hurried away to send the priest and tell his wife.

For two weeks he lingered in a very serious condition, and finally blood-poisoning set in from the injured condition of his kidneys, and he died. I saw him at the hospital a number of times, and, trying to sympathize with his condition, I frequently spoke of what I deemed the dreadful carelessness of it all.

"Ye have to expect thim things," was his one comment. "Ye can't always go unhurted. I never lost a man before, nor had one come to harm. It's the way of things, ye know."

Poor Burke! You'd have thought the whole Italian population of Mount Vernon, where he lived, knew and loved him, the way they turned out at his funeral. It was a state affair for most of them, and they came in hundreds, packing the little brick church, at which he was accustomed to worship, full to overflowing. Matt was there, bandaged and sore, but sorrowful, and Jimmie, artful and scheming in the past; but now thoroughly subdued. He was all sor-row, I think, and sniveled and blubbered and wept hot, blinding tears through the fingers of his dark, leathery hands.

"Misha Buck, Misha Buck," I heard him say, as they bore the body in; and, when they carried the body out of the church, he followed, head down, and as they lowered it in the grave he was inconsolable.

"Misha Buck! Misha Buck! I work-a with him fifteen year."