This tells us that Ponyboy doesn't believe in labels that he see's everybody as people as who they are.<span />
The three allusions Ralph Waldo Emerson makes are Francis Bacon, Irish dayworkers, Coeur-de Lions.
In the beginning of the "Society and Solitude" he talks about the capital and mentions how it is the want of animals spirits and in this excerpt appears all these three.
"The capital defect of cold, arid natures is the want of animal spirits. They seem a power incredible, as if God should raise the dead. The recluse witnesses what others perform by their aid, with a kind of fear. It is as much out of his possibility as the prowess of <em>Coeur-de-Lion</em>, or an <em>Irishman's day's-work</em> on the railroad. [...] As <em>Bacon</em> said of manners, “To obtain them, it only needs not to despise them,"
