If you had been in my classes in the early McKee days , you would have seen a skinny young man in his late twenties with messy black hair , eyes that looked with a sign of infection , bad teeth and the hangdog look you see on immigrants in Ellis Island photographs or on pickpockets being arrested . There were reasons for the hangdog look . I was born in New York and taken to Ireland before I was four . I had three brothers . My father , an alcoholic , wild man , great patriot , always ready to die for Ireland , abandoned us when I was ten . A baby sister died , twin boys died , two boys were born . My mother begged for food , clothing , and coal to boil water for the tea . Neighbors told her to place us in an orphanage , a place for homeless kids . No , no , never . The shame of it . She hung on . We grew . My brothers and I left school at fourteen , worked , dreamed of America and , one by one , sailed away . my mother followed with the youngest , expecting to live happily ever after . That’s what you are supposed to do in America , but she never had a moment of happy-ever-after . In New York I worked at laboring jobs till I was put into the United States Army . After two years in Germany I went to college on the GI Bill program to become a teacher . In college there were courses on literature and composition . There were courses on how to teach by professors who did not know how to teach . After college I went to McKee , where I put what I had learnt to trial and embarrassed myself when the students considered me a fool . 小题1:. What is a hangdog look ?
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