Real Lace by Stephen; Birmingham

York just to ask him for a semantic explanation of the different spellings of their name—clearly the field of Mr. Cuddihy, the publisher, and not Mr. Cudahy, the butcher. R. J. Cuddihy told his Chicago kin Cudahy, “Both our families came over in the forties from the same county, Kilkenny, and the same town. Only there was this difference between our two sets of forebears: ours knew how to spell. The officials at Ellis Island thus recorded your name phonetically—that is, incorrectly—as Cudahy . Our name we ourselves wrote—to wit, Cuddihy.” After imparting this information, Mr. Cuddihy took Mr. Cudahy to lunch. Meanwhile, back in Kilkenny, the name turns up in various guises, from Cuddy to McGillicuddy.
    Mr. Cuddihy was equally precise in other matters. His grandson Jack recalls bringing a schoolmate home one weekend from Portsmouth Priory. At lunch, Grandpa Cuddihy asked the friend, “Where are you from, George?” The young man replied, “Manchester, New Hampshire, sir.” “Ah,” said Mr. Cuddihy, “Manchester, New Hampshire—population 78,563,” or whatever it was at the time. The young man was dumfounded that Mr. Cuddihy had the figure right to the last digit.
    At the same time, Mr. Cuddihy was consistently reserved in respect to his religion, and was careful never to discuss his faith with his non-Catholic friends and business acquaintances, nor to proselytize in any way, nor to get into religious arguments. This was not so much a matter of conscience as it was in line with the Digest’s editorial policy of strict neutrality in all matters. Few non-Catholics who knew him suspected Mr. Cuddihy’s affiliation with the Church, and, in fact, one of his best friends was a Baptist minister named Justin D. Fulton, D.D. Obviously, Dr. Fulton did not realize that his friend was a devout Catholic because, on one occasion, Dr. Fulton presented Mr. Cuddihy with a little book he had written, and which had been published in 1893 by something called the Pauline Propaganda Company. The book, warmly inscribed to Cuddihy by Fulton, was called How to Win Romanists , and was dedicated:
    To
    The Youth of America
    confronted by
    Lost and undone Romanists journeying
    To an endless death, to whom
    few speak and for whom
    few pray …
    in the hope and with the prayer
    that it may show them
    how to win Romanists to Christ
    Fulton’s little book, a polemic of anti-Catholic bigotry, was filled with lurid tales of human sacrifice, of nuns being violated by priests in convents, of onanism among monks in monasteries, of the fallibility of the Pope, and blamed the Catholic Church for everything from slavery to the labor movement. Quite typically, R. J. Cuddihy accepted the gift and thanked his friend, and never let Fulton know the considerable gaffe he had committed.
    Under Mr. Cuddihy’s stern and proper exterior he, too, was a sentimental Irishman. Like his partner, Mr. Funk, Cuddihy was quick to instigate lawsuits against any detractors of either Funk & Wagnalls or its precious Literary Digest . But when he won his cases, he inevitably paid the damages for which his opponents were assessed. In his strictly run offices, he would call errant employees into his chamber, dress them down thoroughly for their misdeeds, and then follow the scolding with an apology and an invitation to lunch. There is a persistent Funk & Wagnalls tale that one afternoon Mr. Cuddihy happened upon two of his Digest editors merrily fornicating among the Digest files or, as he discreetly put it later, “going at it.” Mr. Cuddihy muttered a confused apology, retreated from the scene, and then, after a decent interval had elapsed, summoned the fellow whom he had caught in flagrante to his office. “Young man,” he announced sternly, “you are going to have to accept a reduction in salary!” And it was done.
    A Father Wynne, a Jesuit priest, once said of him, “Catholics