CARL TELLS A STORY
It was April. Already spring was in the air. The grass in the parks was
turning green, forsythia bloomed golden, and boys were playing marbles
on the streets and sidewalks. Even Mulberry Court, shut in as it was,
felt the impulse of the awakening season. The landlord came, looked
over the premises, and after viewing the general shabbiness became
reckless enough to order a broken windowpane to be reset, some of the
tumble-down ceilings to be repaired, and the fire escapes and window
frames to be repainted.
Painting at Mulberry Court was a terrible ordeal. As there was not an
inch of the place that was not crowded to the limit of its capacity,
painting meant that milk bottles, improvised ice chests, and woodpiles
must be put somewhere else; and where that somewhere could be was an
enigma. Furthermore, to add to this difficulty there were the
children--dozens of them tumbling over one another and surging in and
out the doors, a fact that rendered painting a precarious undertaking.
Youthful investigators examined the moist pigment; chubby fingers drew
hieroglyphics in it; while the less curious forgot it altogether and
carried away on their garments imprints of vermilion and black that
transformed their otherwise dingy garments into robes of oriental
splendor.
Carl McGregor was no exception to the rule for wherever calamity lurked
he was sure to be in its vicinity.
"I'd know you'd never rest until you got a patch of red paint on
yourself," announced his mother, surveying him as he started toward the
door. "As, if buying you sweaters ain't enough without your leaning
plumb up against the fire escape and stamping a whole decalcomania of
red stripes on your back like as if you were a convict."
"Is there paint on me, Ma?"
"Is there? I suppose you had no notion of it."
"I hadn't--honest Injun."
"Well, aside from the fact that you're barred up and down neat as if
the lines were ruled there's nothing the matter with you," returned his
mother with a faint smile.
"Oh, I'm awfully sorry, Ma. Truly I am."
"Sorry? I'll be bound you are. You are always a bundle of regrets when
it is too late to help anything. However, you need weep no tears for
that sweater needed washing anyway. You're that rough on your clothes
that none of 'em keep clean more than a minute. I'll get some gasoline
and soak it out in the shed and it will be like new. Peel it off and
give it to me."
"I'm sorry, Ma," the boy repeated.
"It's no great matter, sonny. Children must be children. I'm past
expecting them to be grown-ups," his mother said kindly. "If you hadn't
been getting into the paint you most likely would have been getting
into something else. You have a genius for such mishaps. I'm glad it
was no worse."
Reassured, Carl grinned.
"I do seem to have a good many--" he hesitated, then added,
"misfortunes."
"Misfortunes, do you call 'em? Sure that's a pretty polite word to
apply to the things that manage to happen to you," sniffed Mrs.
McGregor. "I suppose it was a misfortune when you tumbled underneath
the watering cart; and a misfortune when you sat down in the wet tar! A
misfortune when you sent the snowball through the schoolroom window; to
say nothing of the creamcake you treated Jakie Sullivan to that
well-nigh killed him."
"I didn't know the creamcake was going to make him sick."
"No; 'twas just your misfortune. You seem to attract adventures like
that. Why, if I was to let you go into the cotton mills as you are
always begging to do you'd have every machine there out of order in
less than a week and yourself hashed up into little pieces into the
bargain."
She had touched upon an unlucky subject for instantly, with flaming
face, the lad confronted her.
"No, I wouldn't. I wish you would let me go into the mills, Ma. You
might let me try it. Ever so many boys no older than I are working
there and earning oodles of money. If we had more money we could----"
"We could be having an automobile, no doubt, and going to Palm Beach
winters," was the grim response. "Well, Palm Beach or not, you're not
going into any mill so long as we can keep body and soul together
without your doing it. You are going to get an education--you and Mary
too--if it costs me my life. I'm not going to have you grow up knowing
nothing and being nothing. Some day you'll see I was right and thank me
for it."
"I thank you now, Ma," declared Carl soberly. "But that doesn't make me
relish Latin and history any better."
"No matter if it doesn't. What you like is of no consequence," Mrs.
McGregor announced, with a majestic sweep of her hand. "The chief thing
is that you exercise your mind and learn how to use it. The Latin
itself amounts to nothing. It is like boxing gloves or a punching bag,
a thing that serves its turn to limber up your brain. It is learning to
think that counts."
Carl's face brightened.
"The teacher was saying something like that just the other day,"
asserted he eagerly. "He was telling us about some of the people who
had done great things in the world and explaining how long and how hard
they had to work at them. The inventors, for instance, had to think and
think about the things they invented. It didn't just come to them all
in a minute as I used to believe it did."
Although his mother did not look up from her sewing she nodded
encouragingly.
"There was Eli Whitney," continued Carl, coming nearer. "I remembered
about him because of the mills here. He invented the cotton gin, you
know. Mr. Kimball told us that Whitney went through Yale and then
started down South to be a tutor in somebody's family without any idea
of ever being an inventor. But when he got to where he was going the
people who had hired him had changed their minds and found somebody
else and poor Eli Whitney was out of a job."
"A shabby trick!"
"Yes. Still, it was lucky for him, just the same," responded Carl,
"because on the way down he had met the widow of General Greene and she
was sorry for him and asked him to her house. He'd just been vaccinated
because there was lots of smallpox in the South and he was feeling
rotten. You know how sore your arm gets and how sick you are sometimes.
Remember Martin? Well, anyhow, Mrs. Greene either knew what it meant to
be vaccinated or else she was kind of ashamed of the way her part of
the country had treated Eli Whitney. Or maybe she was just kind-hearted
like you. Anyhow she invited Mr. Whitney to come to Savannah when she
saw how mean he felt and the fit he threw at finding himself so far
from home without money or a job."
"Carl!"
"Well, wouldn't you have thrown a fit? I think Mrs. Greene was a
peach," went on Carl, passing serenely over the reproof. "She was
mighty kind to take a stranger into her house when he had no friends."
"Certainly."
"By this time Mr. Whitney had decided to be a lawyer and while he was
making his home at Mrs. Greene's he began to read all the law books he
could lay hands on. Then one day Mrs. Greene busted her embroidery
frame----"
"Did _what_?"
"Oh, you know, Ma," fretted Carl, at being interrupted. "She smashed
the thing and----"
"What had that to do with it?"
"Everything; because, you see, Eli Whitney mended it so nicely that
Mrs. Greene was pleased into the ground and thought he was the smartest
person ever. His father had had a shop at home where as a boy he had
learned to use tools. But of course Mrs. Greene didn't know that. All
she knew was that he made a corking job of her embroidery frame and so
one day when some Georgia gentlemen were there at dinner and were
telling how hard it was to get the seeds out of cotton she up and said,
'You should ask Mr. Whitney how to do it; he can do anything,' and to
prove it she toted out her embroidery frame to show them."
"Did _what_?"
"Oh, say, Ma, don't keep bothering me when I'm trying to tell you a
story," Carl complained peevishly. "You know what I mean well enough."
"Much as ever," was the grim reply.
The lad grinned.
"Well, anyhow, the Georgia cotton men talked to Eli Whitney, explaining
how the cotton stuck to the seeds and got all broken to bits when you
tried to get them out; and how it took nearly a whole day to separate a
pound of cotton fiber from the seeds. And then the cotton planters went
on to tell how there was lots and lots of land in the South where you
couldn't raise rice but could raise cotton if it wasn't such a chore--"
(a warning glance from his mother caused Carl hastily to amend the
phrase) "such a piece of work to get the seeds out. Eli Whitney
listened to their talk and after the men had gone he thought he'd try
to make some sort of a machine that would clear cotton of the seeds."
"And did he?"
"You betcha! I mean, yes, he did. Whitney was no boob." (This time Mrs.
McGregor failed to protest; perhaps she decided it was useless.) "He
had, as I told you, made wheels and canes and knives and nails in his
father's workshop at home. He had even made a violin. So he wasn't at
all fussed about trying to make a cotton gin. I guess he had a hunch he
could do it."
"A _what_?" gasped Mrs. McGregor involuntarily.
"A hunch means he knew he could turn the trick."
The mother shook her head ruefully.
"And me almost killing myself to give you an education!" she ejaculated
beneath her breath.
"Well, anyway, Ma, slang or no slang, I'd be telling you nothing at all
about Eli Whitney if I hadn't gone to school, so cheer up," asserted
Carl impishly.
He heard his mother laugh. Mrs. McGregor had the good old Scotch sense
of humor and when her flashing smile came it was always a delight to
the beholder.
"You're a good boy, Carl, if you do speak the language of an orang-outang,"
she answered. "Where you pick up such a dialect I cannot imagine."
"Oh, it's easy enough to pick it up, Ma. The stunt is not to. Why, what
I've been saying just now is nothing to what I could say if I let
myself go. I've been holding in because of you. I could have had you so
locoed you couldn't have understood a thing I meant if I hadn't
been--been considerate. But I know you don't like slang so I try to cut
it out. You may not believe it but I do try--honest, I do."
"I believe you, laddie," returned his mother kindly. "It's hard, I
know, with all the other boys talking like barbarians. Now go on about
Mr. Whitney. Did he contrive to make the machine the Georgia gentlemen
wanted?"
"Yes, siree!" continued Carl with enthusiasm. "Mrs. Greene gave him a
room to work in down in the basement of her house and he set right
about the job. Unluckily he had never seen any cotton growing because
he had always lived in the North, you know. In fact, he had never laid
eyes on cotton at all until it was made into cloth, so of course he
hadn't much of an idea what he was up against, and the first thing he
had to do was to scurry round and get specimens of cotton with the
seeds in it. It wasn't so easy to do just then, either, because it was
not the season for cotton-gathering and he had to hunt and hunt to get
some of the last season's crop. I believe he finally got what he needed
from a warehouse in New Orleans. Anyhow, he got the cotton pods
somewhere and found out better where he stood. And that reminds me, Ma,
that the teacher told us there were ever so many different kinds of
cotton; and that the Upland cotton, growing in the South, had green
seeds that stuck like--like _anything_ to the white part. You could
hardly separate the two without ruining the cotton fibers and you can
see that as they were to be spun they must not be broken."
"Mr. Whitney did have a puzzle to work out."
"You've said it, Ma! He sure had," beamed Carl. "Well, he kept fussing
round, and fussing round, and by and by he managed to get together a
simple sort of contrivance that would do what he wanted it to. It was
no great shakes of a machine. Any blacksmith or wheelwright could have
made it if he had happened to think of it first. In fact, lots of other
people did make gins like it. That is why Whitney never got rich, the
teacher said."
"But didn't he get his invention patented?" inquired Mrs. McGregor,
laying aside the tulle she was beading.
"Not until it was too late. You see, Mrs. Greene was so set up to think
Mr. Whitney had done the deed she had predicted he would that she had
to go blabbing all over town how clever he was. And the minute people
heard that a cotton gin was really made that would take out the seeds
they came begging to see the wonderful machine and find out how it
worked; and of course Mr. Whitney had to show it off. He hadn't a
notion people would be so low-down as to snitch his idea and go to
making cotton gins of their own. But that's exactly what they did do
and as soon as Mr. Whitney and Mr. Miller who was helping him got wise
to the fact, they locked the new cotton gin up. But do you s'pose that
did any good? Not on your life! The cotton raisers were crazy to get
the machine because everybody needed it so badly. On the plantations
there wasn't enough work to keep the negro slaves busy and it cost a
lot to feed them. The planters figured that if something profitable
could be found for them to do they would earn their keep. They
certainly could not do this picking the seeds out of cotton because it
took them such an age to pick enough to make a pound. The darkies could
gather the crop all right. It had to be gathered by hand. What was
needed was something that would take the seeds out and make it possible
to raise and sell big quantities of cotton. So Whitney's gin exactly
filled the bill. It was just what the whole South had been waiting for
and if such a thing existed people were bound to have it. Naturally
when Whitney wouldn't show it to them and locked it up, they thought he
was almighty stingy and some of the meanest of the bunch broke into the
place where he kept it and carried it off."
"Oh!"
"Rotten, wasn't it? They ought to have been hung; but they weren't.
Instead, the model of the cotton gin got abroad and all the South
started to making cotton gins until they were all over the place."
"I'm afraid Mr. Whitney wasn't a very business-like man," ventured Mrs.
McGregor.
"He wasn't. Most generally inventors aren't, I guess. Still, how was he
to know they were going to swipe his idea? Of course he and Mr. Miller
went straight to work and tried to pick up the pieces. Mr. Whitney went
home to New Haven and set about making cotton gins on a larger scale
than he could make them at Mrs. Greene's; but even then he could not
make them fast enough. And on top of all his factory burned down and
for a while he couldn't make any gins at all. It seemed as if hard luck
pursued him whichever way he turned."
"It certainly did seem so!"
"He and Mr. Miller, who had now gone in as his partner, spent no end of
money in lawsuits, and Mr. Miller got so worn out and discouraged
fighting the infringers that finally he died, leaving Eli Whitney to
carry on the battle alone. And it was a battle, too, to get any
satisfaction out of the people who were making use of his idea. I
believe that North Carolina and Tennessee did pay him something, and
after a while South Carolina and Georgia did. In all he received about
ninety thousand dollars; but the lawsuits he had been compelled to go
through to get it ate up a good slice of the receipts. Besides, some
more had to go for the factory that got burned and other expenses. So
he didn't get much out of the deal, I guess. But the South did. The
Whitney gin whooped up their cotton trade in great style. Every year
the planters grew more and more cotton because now that they could get
the seeds out it paid to raise it, and by and by they were exporting
millions of bales. Cotton is now one of our biggest exports, the
teacher said. We grow billions of pounds of it and for the most part it
is the green seed, Upland cotton, cleaned by a gin founded on Whitney's
idea. That's why I say it does you no good to go to school," concluded
Carl. "Whitney went through Yale college and invented his cotton gin
before he had been out of the university a year, and what good did it
do him, I'd like to know?"
"He did a lot to help the world along, sonny."
"Oh, I suppose he did," admitted the boy. "But for all that he didn't
get the spondulics. That is why I want to go into the factory. So I can
get some cash to help out here at home. S'pos'n we didn't have Uncle
Frederick Dillingham or your sewing money? And anyhow, I don't want you
to be always sewing. I want you to have pretty clothes, ride round in
an automobile, and be a lady!"
"Oh, Carlie! Can't one work for a living and still be a lady, my dear?"
Carl flushed.
"Of course she can, Ma. You're a lady right now. Still, I do wish you
didn't have to make those silly dresses all the time. Well, no matter.
You just wait until I get through school. You shall be wearing dresses
like those and somebody else shall be sewing the beads on."
A suspicious moisture gathered in Mrs. McGregor's eyes.
"You're a good boy, Carl," answered she gently, "even if you do
slaughter your mother tongue. Now be off with you. All this palaver
about Mr. Whitney has almost made you late for school, and left me
hardly knowing whether I am sewing frontwards or backwards. Still, it
isn't a bad thing to have a son that knows something."
It was evident from Mrs. McGregor's tone that she might have said more
but for the stern belief that she must not flatter her children.
Therefore to cut short the danger of such a crime she brusquely hurried
Carl out of the kitchen, merely calling after him:
"Don't forget to bring home a yeast cake to-night or you'll get no
bread to-morrow. Put your mind on it, now. If you remembered the
errands I ask you to do half as well as you remember about cotton gins
and the like you'd save layers of shoe leather."
It was a characteristic farewell. Mrs. McGregor would not have been
Mrs. McGregor had she not uttered it. All this Carl understood and,
undaunted by the words, he bent to kiss his mother on the cheek.
"I suppose you wouldn't have time to stop into the Harlings on your
way," suggested she, with a twinkle in her eye.
"I was planning to stop there a minute as I went along."
"I'll be bound you were. One might as well try to keep a fly out of the
molasses as to keep you away from the Harlings. Well, since you are
going that way anyhow, you can carry over a bowl of broth. I made it
yesterday a-purpose. Tell Mrs. Harling it will only need to be heated
up for herself and Grandfather Harling."