Explore "A Wild Irishman. (Sweet-Knot and Galamus)" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Not very many years ago the writer was for some months stationed at / South Bend, a thriving little city of northern Indiana, its main / population on the one side of the St. Joseph river, but quite a / respectable fraction thereof taking its industrial way to the opposite / shore, and there gaining an audience and a hearing in the rather / imposing growth and hurly-burly of its big manufactories, and the / consequent rapid appearance of multitudinous neat cottages, tenement / houses and business blocks. A stranger, entering South Bend proper on / any ordinary day, will be at some loss to account for its prosperous / appearance -- its flagged and bowldered streets -- its handsome mercantile / blocks, banks, and business houses generally. Reasoning from cause to / effect, and seeing but a meager sprinkling of people on the streets / throughout the day, and these seeming, for the most part, merely / idlers, and in no wise accessory to the evident thrift and opulence of / their surroundings, the observant stranger will be puzzled at the / situation.
But when evening comes, and the outlying foundries, / sewing-machine, wagon, plow, and other "works," together with the / paper-mills and all the nameless industries -- when the operations of / all these are suspended for the day, and the workmen and workwomen / loosed from labor -- then, as this vast army suddenly invades and / overflows bridge, roadway, street and lane, the startled stranger will / fully comprehend the why and wherefore of the city's high prosperity. / And, once acquainted with the people there, the fortunate sojourner / will find no ordinary culture and intelligence, and, as certainly, he / will meet with a social spirit and a wholesouled heartiness that will / make the place a lasting memory. The town, too, is the home of many / world-known notables, and a host of local celebrities, the chief of / which latter class I found, during my stay there, in the person of / Tommy Stafford, or "The Wild Irishman" as everybody called him.