laugh at to his face as much as one liked.

Yet with all his shamelessness, his pensiveness, his elegance, I felt that
somehow our national triumph was not complete in him,--that there were yet
more finished forms of self-abasement in the Old World, till one day I
looked out of the window and saw at a little distance my veteran digging a
cellar for an Irishman. I own that the spectacle gave me a shock of
pleasure, and that I ran down to have a nearer view of what human eyes
have seldom, if ever, beheld,--an American, pure blood, handling the pick,
the shovel, and the wheelbarrow, while an Irishman directed his labors.
Upon inspection, it appeared that none of the trees grew with their roots
in the air, in recognition of this great reversal of the natural law; all
the French-roof houses stood right side up. The phenomenon may become more
common in future, unless the American race accomplishes its destiny of
dying out before the more populatory foreigner, but as yet it graced the
veteran with an exquisite and signal distinction. He, however, seemed to
feel unpleasantly the anomaly of his case, and opened the conversation by
saying that he should not work at that job to-morrow, it hurt his side;
and went on to complain of the inhumanity of Americans to Americans.
"Why," said he, "they'd rather give out their jobs to a nigger than to one
of their own kind. I was beatin' carpets for a gentleman on the Avenue,
and the first thing I know he give most of 'em to a nigger. I beat seven
of 'em in one day, and got two dollars; and the nigger beat 'em by the
piece, and he got a dollar an' a half apiece. My luck!"

Here the Irishman glanced at his hireling, and the rueful veteran hastened
to pile up another wheelbarrow with earth. If ever we come to reverse
positions generally with our Irish brethren, there is no doubt but they
will get more work out of us than we do from them at present.