composed of two pahts, de sextet an’de octrave.”
“That’s pretty good. They must make you work out there?”
“DO they?” he cried. “I’ll tell duh cock-eyed world dey do!… Do you know who de greatest prose-writeh was?” he burst out with the same convulsive suddenness.
“No… who was it? Jonathan Swift?”
“Guh-wan!”
“Addison?… Dryden?… Matthew Arnold?” the youth asked hopefully.
“Guh-wan, Guh-wan!” he shouted derisively. “Yuh’re way off!”
“Am I?… Who was it then?”
“James Henry Cardinal Nooman,” he crowed triumphantly. “Dat’s who it was!… Father Dolan said so…. Chee!… Dey ain’t nuttin’dat guy don’t know! He’s duh greatest English scholeh livin’!… Nooman wrote de Apologia pro Vita Suo,” he said triumphantly. “Dat’s Latin.”
“Well, yes, he is a good writer,” said the other boy. “But Thomas Carlyle is a good writer, too?” he proposed argumentatively.
“Guh-wan!” shouted Eddy derisively. “Watcha givin’me?” He was silent a moment; then he added with a grin, “Yuh know de reason why you say dat?”
“No, why?”
“It’s because yuh’re a Sout’paw,” and suddenly he laughed, naturally and good-naturedly.
“A Southpaw? How do you mean?”
“Oh, dat’s duh name de fellows call’em out at school,” he said.
“Call who?”
“Why, guys like you,” he said. “Dat’s de name we call duh Protestants,” he said, laughing. “We call’em Sout’paws.”
The word in its connotation of a life that was hostile, hard, fanatic, and suspicious of everything alien to itself was disgraceful and shameful, but there was something irresistibly funny about it too, and suddenly they both laughed loudly.
After that, they got along together much better: Eddy came in to see the other youth quite often, he talked more freely and naturally, and sometimes he would bring his English themes and ask for help with them.
Such were the Boston Irish as he first saw them; and often as he thought of the wild, extravagant and liberal creatures of his childhood—
