Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1889 — A COOL IRISH BOY. [ARTICLE]

A COOL IRISH BOY.

Om of Small Thing* In tll«" that : * Aston lsk.es a Ulan. ' ' A man who k the head of a large commercial house in Worth street, New York, remarked recently in Delmonicok that it was the small things in life that astonished him. " * “I do not think," he said, “that I was ever more completely nonplussed in my life than 1 was this morning. My father, who still lives in Ireland—God bless him—sent me some time since a small Irish boy with a vary self-contained and solemn exterior. He bad a note asking me to provide him a situation. The boy had a short and terse fray of speaking which rather pleased me. He said he was going to visit his aunt in Chicago, and that he would return and accept a position in my place. I gave him a small clerkship, and three or four days ago he came in and took his positron behind a desk in the outer office. The hoy is abeut 17 years old. I had forgotten all about him until this morning when I went out into the outer office, and while I was talking there with some men who came in to see me my cashier came up with a check for me to sign. He had left his pen on his desk and so had L I took the check, placed if on the counter, and holding my hand out to one of the clorks, said: ‘Have you a pen?’ “ ’I have,’ “I glanced up and saw that it was my young Irish friend. He looked at me m a cold manner and added, ‘l am using it:’ .-“- ‘Let me haveit,’ I said. “ ‘I couldn’t think of it, ’ said the boy placidly. breath, looked at him again, and said: “ ‘That,’’ said the boy calmly,’ ‘is precisely what I mean to'say 1’ “There was an awful hush in the office for a moment; then I turned and went into my inner room. I signed the chck and the cashier tiptoed away. Slowly and by infinitely gradual degrees an awful rage rose up in my breast, mid I sent out after an hour to have the boy discharged. I found that the cashier had anticipated my wishes. I do not understand it to this hour. It will go down to posterity as the most startling moment of my life They told me that the boy departed with an unruffled dignity, and none of us have seen him since."