A Cathedral Singer | Page 7

lad, with ready courtesy and
good nature. "I don't say boss. We are Southerners. I say mister."
He gave the man an unfavorable look as though of a mind to take his
true measure; also as being of a mind to let the man know that he had
not taken the boy's measure.

The man smiled at being corrected to such good purpose; but before he
could speak again, the lad went on to clinch his correction:
"And I only say mister when I am selling papers and am not at home."
"What do you say when not selling papers and when you are at home?"
asked the man, forced to a smile.
"I say 'sir,' if I say anything," retorted the lad, flaring up, but still polite.
The man looked at him with increasing interest. Another word in the
lad's speech had caught his attention--Southerner.
That word had been with him a good deal in recent years; he had not
quite seemed able to get away from it. Nearly all classes of people in
New York who were not Southerners had been increasingly reminded
that the Southerners were upon them. He had satirically worked it out
in his own mind that if he were ever pushed out of his own position, it
would be some Southerner who pushed him. He sometimes thought of
the whole New York professional situation as a public wonderful awful
dinner at which almost nothing was served that did not have a Southern
flavor as from a kind of pepper. The guests were bound to have
administered to them their shares of this pepper; there was no getting
away from the table and no getting the pepper out of the dinner. There
was the intrusion of the South into every delicacy.
"We are Southerners," the lad had announced decisively; and there the
flavor was again, though this time as from a mere pepper-box in a
school basket. Thus his next remark was addressed to his own thoughts
as well as to the lad:
"And so you are a Southerner!" he reflected audibly, looking down at
the Southern plague in small form.
"Why, yes, Mister, we are Southerners," replied the lad, with a gay and
careless patriotism; and as giving the handy pepper-box a shake, he
began to dust the air with its contents: "I was born on an old Southern
battle-field. When Granny was born there, it had hardly stopped

smoking; it was still piled with wounded and dead Northerners. Why,
one of the worst batteries was planted in our front porch."
This enthusiasm as to the front porch was assumed to be acceptable to
the listener. The battery might have been a Cherokee rose.
The man had listened with a quizzical light in his eyes.
"In what direction did you say that battery was pointed?"
"I didn't say; but it was pointed up this way, of course."
The man laughed outright.
"And so you followed in the direction of the deadly Southern shell and
came north--as a small grape-shot!"
"But, Mister, that was long ago. They had their quarrel out long ago.
That's the way we boys do: fight it out and make friends again. Don't
you do that way?"
"It's a very good way to do," said the man. "And so you sell papers?"
"I sell papers to people in the park, Mister, and back up on the avenue.
Granny is particular. I'm not a regular newsboy."
"I heard you singing. Does anybody teach you?"
"Granny."
"And so your grandmother is your music teacher?"
It was the lad's turn to laugh.
"Granny isn't my grandmother; Granny is my mother."
Toppling over in the dust of imagination went a gaunt granny image; in
its place a much more vital being appeared just behind the form of the
lad, guarding him even now while he spoke.

"And so your mother takes pupils?"
"Only me."
"Has any one heard you sing?"
"Only she."
It had become more and more the part of the man during this colloquy
to smile; he felt repeatedly in the flank of his mind a jab of the comic
spur. Now he laughed at the lad's deadly preparedness; business
competition in New York had taught him that he who hesitates a
moment is lost. The boy seemed ready with his answers before he heard
the man's questions.
"Do you mind telling me your name?"
"My name is Ashby. Ashby Truesdale. We come from an old English
family. What is your name, and what kind of family do you come from,
Mister?"
"And where do you live?"
The lad wheeled, and strode to the edge of the rock,--the path along
there is blasted out of solid rock,--and looking downward, he pointed to
the first row of buildings in the distant flats.
"We live down there. You