Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories - G. A. Birmingham

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They were both young men. They both had eagerly intelligent faces. The fact that they were not drinking either beer or coffee convinced me that they were Americans. Chess-players of any other nation drink either beer or coffee while they play. Americans seldom drink anything except iced water or cocktails—and neither one nor other is a possible drink while playing chess.

      I guessed they were university men—possibly professors; certainly athletes. Then I guessed again, making up my mind that they were business men, with ample leisure for golf. They were certainly accustomed to use their brains. They certainly lived a good deal in the open air.

      The game came to an end before I guessed any more. One of the players knocked the ashes out of his pipe and declared that he was going to bed. The other disclaimed sleepiness and lit a cigar. We began to talk and—of all subjects in the world—hit on American politics.

      Now politics is not, in my opinion, a fit subject for conversation anywhere. If you talk your own politics—the politics of your native land—you are sure to lose your temper or else the other man will lose his. If you talk the politics of another nation you yawn and finally go to sleep, because all foreign politics, being quite uncomprehensible, are dull. American politics are to me the dullest of all, because I never get anywhere near understanding them. Nevertheless it was American politics my keen-eyed chess-player talked.

      I listened and gained nothing from his denunciation of one party or the other. I forget now which it was that he denounced. At last I asked my question. I call it mine because I have asked it eighteen times of eighteen Americans and got eighteen different answers to it: "Why is there no Labour party in America—no Labour party that runs candidates in frank opposition to Republicans and Democrats alike, as the English Labour party opposes both Conservatives and Liberals?"

      This is, I think, an intelligent question. There are labourers in America—immense numbers of them. It seems odd that they should be satisfied with either of the old-established parties. My new friend pondered the answer for a minute. Then he gave me his answer—a clear-cut, logically complete answer, which did not satisfy me in the least.

      "America," he said, "is a land of free opportunities for all. Any man, no matter how he starts, may become rich."

      "Lots of men do," I said. "Look at —— and ——." I named two worthy millionaires who happened to be on board our steamer.

      "Well," said my friend, "if a man thinks he's going to be rich—and every labourer in America thinks that—he's not going to help the other labourers to combine against capital, is he?"

      I suppose my face showed that I did not regard this as a satisfactory explanation of the failure of American cilivisation to produce a Labour party. My friend went on to justify his general statement by quoting a particular case.

      "I'm an engineer," he said, "and I'm in charge of a big job away out in what you'd call the wilds. That section isn't settled much—just a few farmers scattered about; and my crowd fixed up in a little wooden town the company built for them. There are a couple of thousand of them—and a pretty tough lot they are—Slavs mostly, with a sprinkling of Italians. Scum!"

      He spoke the last word with venom that surprised me in a citizen of the land of human equality—the land that fought to secure the negro his rights as a man and a brother.

      "Some time ago," he went on, "we had trouble with them—not a strike; it doesn't come to that—just trouble over some agreement the company made the men sign. I'm not saying it was quite a legal agreement, for it wasn't; but it was good enough and nobody lost by it. Well, the trouble wouldn't have amounted to much if it hadn't been for a big, husky Russian—a sulky devil of a man who started talking about knifing the company's officers, chiefly me.

      "I knew what was going on, but I didn't see my way to stop it. I just slept with a gun handy and kept my eyes open during the day. I watched that Russian pretty close. You can't blame a Russian, of course, for wanting to knife people. Murder seems to be the only way of getting the necessary reforms in their country, and this fellow wasn't long out of it. All the same, I didn't want to be an innocent victim."

      I think my engineer friend showed a nice spirit in making excuses for the Russian.

      "Well, one day the whole conspiracy just got bursted. There was a little Irishman—the only one we had in the whole crowd, for the Irish are a bit above that kind of work now. The Russian was making a speech one evening and the rest of the men were cheering him. He was a big brute, well over six feet high. I was a football player when I was in college, but I don't mind owning that I should have thought twice before engaging in a scrap with that Russian.

      "My little Irishman didn't think more than once. He walked right up to the Russian, and when he was standing in front of him he didn't reach up beyond where the top button of the Russian's waistcoat would have been if he'd had a waistcoat. 'Listen to me now, son!' said the Irishman: 'Just you can that talk about knives and killing. It's not wanted here.' The Russian kind of collapsed, and that was the end of our labour trouble."

      "It's an interesting story," I said; "but I don't quite see what it has to do with the curious fact that there's no effective Labour party in America."

      "It's got this to do with it: Cassidy expects to be a capitalist some day—and he doesn't want any Russian coming round and knifing him when the time comes. See that?"

      I did not even try to see it. The matter had ceased, for the moment, to interest me. My attention was fixed on the Irishman's name.

      "Did you say Cassidy?" I asked.

      "Yes. And if you look out you'll see that name on the list of first-class passengers on one of these boats pretty soon. He'll be down as having engaged a suite of rooms on B Deck."

      "Was he by any chance called Michael Antony?" I asked.

      "The men called him Mick," said my friend; but of course, that's common with all Irishmen. Now I come to think of it, I believe it was Michael Antony he wrote when he signed as an overseer. I made him overseer after he laid out the Russian."

      "That," I said, "was probably last November."

      "It was—sure. But how did you guess?"

      "I happened to hear another part of the same story from his mother," I said. "It was Sonny she called him, but his real name was Michael Antony."

      "Sonny or Micky," said my friend, "the name will be worth having on the bottom of a cheque some day soon. That little Irishman will make good! He's got grit!"

       Table of Contents

      ONNIE is a girl's name and it is not a mispronunciation of Annie. It is a convenient shortening of Honoria, which is far too majestic a name for a child.

      It would have been grotesque to call Onnie Dever Honoria when I knew her first—though the long name would suit her very well now.

      Indeed she is so grand now that I should not dare to call her anything but Miss Dever; and if I had to address a letter to her my inclination would be to embellish her name and write on the outside of the envelope: The Honourable Honoria—or to Her Honour, Honoria Dever. This would be wrong, of course; but any one who has seen the lady lately would find it excusable.

      When Onnie Dever was young she lived with her parents and a great many other little Devers on an island off the coast of Connaught, which is the poorest of the four provinces of Ireland. The Atlantic Ocean washes the shores of Connaught, and Onnie's home was an island in that great sea. It was not, however, a very remote island. Only a narrow channel separated it from the mainland, and this channel went nearly dry at the bottom of a low tide. At the age of five—and legs are very short at the age of five—Onnie could splash across the channel when a spring tide was at its ebb.

      There was no need for her to take off her shoes and stockings, for in those days she never wore any. When the tide was high the water in the channel was fifteen feet deep, and the only way of getting to the mainland

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