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.
Pages:
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33