IN A LOGGING CAMP (_Concluded_)
I slept soundly that night, and was awakened in the morning by the
mad clatter of an alarm-clock. It was about four o'clock. I could
hear Fitz-Adams getting up in the little chamber which serves him as
a sleeping-room and an office. He went below, and soon had the fires
roaring fiercely in the kitchen and lobby; and I could hear him call
to the women to get up and get breakfast. Next he appeared in the
loft, and aroused the teamsters. In an incredibly short time they were
dressed, and had lit their lanterns, and were gone to the stable to
feed and tend their horses.
I got up with them, and was nearly dressed, when the boss reappeared
in the loft. He walked down between the rows of beds, laying heavy
hands here and there upon sleeping figures, and raising his voice to
the call: "Come, roll out of this, you damn ---- ---- ----!" There was
no ill-temper in his manner or tone; it was simply his habitual way of
rousing the crew.
I was first at the run, first at the towels and comb, and was sitting
in warm comfort behind the stove when the other men came shambling from
the loft, their eyes blinking in the sudden light of the lobby.
We had beefsteak and potatoes and bread and coffee for breakfast. As
soon as he had finished his meal, I went up to the boss to remind him
of my existence, for he had in no way noticed me since Saturday night.
"You'll help the teamsters load bark, Buddy. Have you got any gloves?"
"No," I said.
"Then come this way." We went together to the office, and he spread
before me a number of new pairs of heavy skin gloves.
"I don't know which will be best suited to the work that you want me to
do," I said. "Won't you select a pair for me?"
"My advice to you, Buddy, is to wear them mits," and he pointed to a
pair of white pigskin mittens. "They'll cost you seventy-five cents,
which I'll charge to your wages."
There was a cot in the office, and a writing-desk, and in one corner a
small stock of woodsmen's furnishing goods: boots, hats, overalls, and
blanket-jackets, besides the gloves.
The boss locked the door behind us, and told me to follow him. He
carried a lantern, and lit the way to the stables.
Outside it was white and still, almost like a clear, quiet night in the
snows of midwinter; for a heavy frost covered everything, and in the
thin, unmoving air you could almost hear the crackling formation of
frost-crystals. Into the darkness of the forest the stars shone with
greater glory, and Orion was just sinking beyond the western mountain.
The four or five teamsters and Old Man Toler and I had gathered in
front of the stable, where the bark-wagons stood in the open. These
were strong vehicles, each with four massive wheels, and they supported
wide-spreading frames within which three or more cords of bark could be
loaded.
We "greased" the wagons by lantern-light, and then "hooked up" the
horses. The wagon in the van was driven by "Black Bob." Fitz-Adams
ordered Old Man Toler and me to go with that teamster and help him get
on a load of bark.
Black Bob, muffled to the eyes in a long ulster which was bound about
his waist with a piece of rope, stood erect on the loose boards that
formed the floor of his wagon, and gathered up the reins, and then
started his horses with a ringing oath. Old Man Toler and I followed
after, on foot, up a rocky road that had been newly cut to a point on
the mountain where strips of hemlock-bark lay piled like cord-wood.
Black Bob swayed to the jolting of the wagon, but kept his balance
with the ease of long habit, and swore a running accompaniment to the
tugging of his team. He was the tallest man in the camp, almost a giant
in height and in proportional development, and he owed his name to his
blue-black hair and swarthy complexion. He was a native-born American,
and, although he seemed never to discriminate among the other men on
grounds of nationality, I thought that some of them did not like him
because of a certain domineering manner he had.
He drew up now beside a pile of bark, and Toler and I placed a large
stone under each hind wheel to relieve the pull on the horses.
It had been growing light as we climbed the mountain, and now we could
see the sunlight on the topmost trees across the ravine.
Toler took up a position facing the bark-pile, with his back to the
wagon. He began to pass swiftly the pieces of bark over his head and
into the rigging, where Black Bob stood ready to load. I followed
Toler's example, imitating his movements as closely as I could, but
was painfully aware of my awkwardness.
We had been but a few minutes at work when the boss came driving up
behind us; as he turned out in order to pass, he called to me to come
with him, and lend a hand at loading.
I had an uncomfortable premonition of the ordeal before me; why, I do
not know, for the boss had treated me civilly so far; but I greatly
wished to stay in the camp, and I much feared discharge.
The boss drove on for some distance, then branched off on a side-road,
and having passed a number of bark-piles, finally turned around with
great difficulty, and drew up, as Black Bob had done, beside a cord of
bark.
I hastened to place a stone under a hind wheel, and then threw off my
coat, and, getting in between the wagon and the pile, I began to pass
the bark over my head, as I had learned to do from Toler.
The boss stood on the bottom of the rig, accepting listlessly the bark
as I passed it, and tossing it carelessly into place. His whole manner
was meant to convey to me the idea of my own inefficiency, as though he
was ready to work, even anxious to get warmed up in the frosty air,
but my part was so slowly done that his own was reduced to child's play.
The storm brewed for a time in grim silence, but soon it broke into
angry shouts of "Faster, faster, damn you!" and then the entire gamut
of insults and excommunications.
I had been cursed at West Point, though in terms less hard to bear; and
in expectation of the worst, I thought that I had schooled myself to
take it philosophically when it came. But I had an awful moment now,
for philosophy was clean gone, and in its place was a swift, mad desire
to kill; and as the hot blood rushed to my brain, and tingled in my
finger-tips, all that I could see for the instant were the handy stones
under my feet, and the close range of Fitz-Adams's head.
I do not know what it was that saved me, unless it was the sight of
Fitz-Adams flushed with the anger into which he lashed himself, and
becoming the more ludicrously impotent in his rage, as I restrained
my temper, and showed no sign of fear. Why he did not discharge me on
the spot I do not know. With awful imprecations he kept urging me to
faster and yet faster work. I quickened my clumsy pace to the swiftest
that I could maintain with efficiency, and held it there, careless of
his curses; and, exhausted as I was, I yet had the satisfaction at the
last of noting that our load was on as quickly as was Black Bob's.
And Fitz-Adams, too, found a curious balm for his troubled feelings.
We were at the last cord, and he was cursing hard, while I panted and
sweated in my straining efforts to pass the bark aboard. The strips
were large and heavy, some of them, and they all lay rough side up;
and as you lifted them over your head there fell upon you from each a
shower of dust and dirt that had gathered in the crumbling outer bark.
This filled your ears and hair, and found its way far down your back. I
had blocked the wheel, but we were on a sharp descent, and the load was
growing heavy. Evidently Fitz-Adams feared our breaking loose, and so
he stopped me suddenly with an order to "make fast the lock-break." Now
"the lock-break" conveyed the dimmest notion to my mind, and the boss
would give no hint as to what it really was nor how it was to be "made
fast;" instead, he stood and watched me, while, with awkward guesses as
to its purpose, I succeeded in unhooking one end of a heavy chain that
hung under the wagon, and having passed it between two spokes of a hind
wheel, I clumsily made fast the hook in a link of the chain drawn taut.
Fitz-Adams stood, meanwhile, in speechless anger, enraged beyond relief
from oaths; and then the tension broke, with comical effect, in a
sentence which seemed to come to him as a happy inspiration:
"I'm damned, Buddy, if you ain't greener than a green Irishman;
_greener than a green Irishman_." He repeated the phrase as though it
exactly met the case, and brought him satisfaction far beyond the power
of profanity; and then he shouted through the forest:
"Hey, Bob!"
"Hello!"
"This Buddy, he's greener than a green Irishman!" and he laughed aloud,
and there came an answering laugh from Bob; and the boss started down
the mountain with his load, the locked wheel bounding and crunching
among the stones, while he swore to steady the horses.
That was all of the loading for the morning, so Toler and I joined
company. Toler had in charge the cutting of roads to the bark-piles,
and I was to serve with him.
The piles were, some of them, in most inaccessible places. The
hemlock-trees on that side of the mountain had first been felled, then
the bark was cut round on the trunks at intervals of four feet. Next
the bark was peeled off and carefully heaped near by, while the trees
themselves were trimmed and then sawed into logs of desired lengths,
and these were "skidded" into piles. From the piles, in the spring,
when the streams are high, the logs are sent by "skid ways" into the
run, and, once in the water, the lumbermen use their finest skill in
floating them to the market at Williamsport.
In the meanwhile the bark must be got out and carted to the tannery,
and Toler and I had our work laid out in cutting ways for the wagons.
Supplied each with an axe, a cant-hook, and a grabbing-hoe, we began
the work of cutting through the brushwood and clearing away the stumps,
and laying rough bridges over the small streams.
I was delighted at my good fortune in being set to work under Toler.
My respect for him grew steadily. An experience of nearly forty years
as a woodsman had developed his natural gifts to the point of highest
skill, and he had a marvellous instinct for directing a course through
the maze of tangled undergrowth and logs and stumps which marked
the ruins of the forest. I was soon lost, but he turned hither and
thither, with the ready familiarity of a gamin to whom there are no
intricacies in the East End. He had the inspiring air of knowing what
he was about, and the less common possession of actual knowledge, and
he did his work in a masterly manner. "A workman that needeth not to
be ashamed" constantly recurred to me as a phrase which aptly fitted
him. And besides being a clever woodsman, Toler was clean of speech,
that is, comparatively clean of speech--he swore, but his oaths were
conventional and not usually of the blood-congealing kind of some of
the other men.
That was a long morning's work, from earliest dawn until noon, and the
ultimate advent of the dinner-hour was hugely welcome. Toler and I
knocked off work at the sound of the noon whistle at the tannery four
or five miles away. Only a few of us gathered at the camp. Fitz-Adams,
with the other teamsters, and "Sam the Book-keeper," who is also the
camp carpenter, and Toler and I made up the number. The rest of the
crew were too far in the mountains to return at midday, and "Tim the
Blacksmith" drove off in the buckboard with a hot dinner for them.
The first work of the afternoon was to help the teamsters get on a
second load of bark. Again the boss forced me to his aid, and cursed
me as he had done before, only I thought that he had been drinking,
and there was certainly an added viciousness in his oaths, and in the
threats of sudden death. But I had the consolation now of knowing that,
as soon as the load was on, I should work with Toler for the rest of
the day. Toler did not curse me, although it was impossible for him
to wholly conceal the slender regard in which he held a man who never
before had seen a grubbing-hoe, nor a cant-hook, and who handled an axe
about as effectively as a girl throws a stone, and to whom the woods
were a hopeless labyrinth. But Toler had the instincts of a gentleman;
for all his want of respect for a man so ignorant as I, it was clear
that there was not a little patient compassion in the feeling which he
bore me, and he was at pains to teach me, and he eagerly encouraged any
sign of improvement on my part.
But this time I was not done with Fitz-Adams when the afternoon's load
was on. Toler and I soon needed a crowbar, and he sent me to fetch one
from the blacksmith's shop.
Near the shop there is a depression in the road, and there the soil is
somewhat soft. Much noise was coming from that quarter; and as I neared
it I could see that Black Bob's wheels were fast in the mud, and that
the boss's load was drawn close up behind and blocked.
Black Bob was on the ground beside his team, his reins in hand, and
with frantic oaths he was urging his horses to their utmost strength.
Fitz-Adams stood by and watched; but at sight of the weakening brutes,
he quickly unbolted his own whiffle-trees, and driving his team ahead,
made fast to the tongue of Black Bob's wagon. Then both together they
started up their horses, lashing them with the far-reaching leather
thongs that swung from the short stocks which they carried, and joining
in a chorus of furious curses. Slowly the great wheels began to rise
from the deep grooves in which they had settled; but in another minute,
as the strength of the horses failed, the wheels sunk surely back
again. Fitz-Adams was beside himself with rage, and at that moment he
caught sight of me.
"What are you doing here?" he shouted with an oath.
"Toler sent me for a crowbar."
"He did, did he? Then I'll send you to hell!" and with that he seized
an axe which lay near, and swinging it above his head, he rushed at
me. It was a menacing figure that he made, with the axe held aloft by
his giant arms, his eyes flashing, and his nostrils dilating with the
childish passion which mastered him; but he was as harmless as a child
at any show of fearlessness, and there was the oddest anticlimax in his
mild command to "get that damn crowbar and hurry back to Toler," which
I was glad enough to do; for my part was a mere pretence of courage;
in reality I felt scared out of a year's growth, and my legs were
trembling violently.
Through the following days there was little variation for Toler and me
in the programme of work. We loaded bark until the teamsters were off,
and then cut ways to the piles.
There is, however, an incident of Tuesday morning which will linger in
my memory. It was the fulfilment of Dick the Kid's prophecy. I heard a
man swear.
The boss anticipated the usual time of the morning cursing, and gave me
an initial one that day in the dark in front of the stables, while the
teamsters stood by with their lanterns in hand, and listened critically
with sober faces, as though they were determining, with a nice sense of
the possible, whether Fitz-Adams was doing himself justice. At the last
he turned to them:
"Will I kill him now, or let him live one day more?"
"Let the damn dog live," came from Black Bob.
"Then you'll take him," said the boss, "and dray out that bar." So
Black Bob and I set off in company.
I was not a little perplexed by the puerility of Fitz-Adams's rage.
It seemed singularly out of keeping with the sturdy manliness of the
fellow. If he wished to get rid of me, why did he not discharge me? I
began to suspect that the cause lay in tenderness of heart, of which
he was secretly ashamed. To him I was _avis rara_ in a lumber-camp. No
doubt he thought me some hitherto unknown species of immigrant; and
being too tender-hearted to assume the responsibility of turning me
adrift, he hoped to frighten me away. Black Bob soon puzzled me almost
as much. He was driving the dray, which is a rude, low sledge, used
to draw out bark from points that are inaccessible to the wagons. We
were walking together at the side of the road, and neither of us spoke.
Presently Bob stopped his horses to give them breath, and then he
turned to me. His speech was halting, and there was an uncomfortable,
apologetic quality in his voice, but the feeling was evidently sincere.
To my surprise he was bidding me, with utmost kindness, not to mind
Fitz-Adams's curses, and he added that the boss meant nothing by
them, that he really knew no better. It seemed to me an act of truest
friendliness on Black Bob's part, involving charity and moral courage
of high order, and I was far more grateful than my acknowledgment
implied. It produced a comfortable elation, which lasted while we got
on a towering load of bark in silence in the earliest dawn, and started
for the road. We had almost reached it, and the horses were pulling
hard, when, with the suddenness of a pistol-shot, the dray came sharply
against the stump of a stubborn sapling that rose unseen in the way,
and in an instant the horses were plunging forward in broken harness,
and half the load was sliding gently to the ground.
Black Bob brought the horses to a stand, and then stood still himself.
I was filled with admiration for his self-control, for I dreamt that
he was making a successful effort to restrain himself. In reality he
was summoning all his powers; and in another moment, with face uplifted
to the pale stars, he broke forth in blasphemies so hellish, that for
the next full minute I might have been listening to the outcries of a
tormented fiend, held tight in the grip of remorseless agony.
Thursday morning brought the crisis in the history of my stay in camp.
In the course of the midday cursing of the day before, Fitz-Adams
told me that he was giving me my last chance. I tried hard to show my
fitness for the place, and our load was the first to start for the
tannery; but to all appearances Fitz-Adams was not placated. I thought
that the last hour of my stay in camp was surely come, and with a
heavy heart I began to plan the next move. But for some reason nothing
further was said to me about leaving, and Thursday morning found me
again helping the boss.
His mood had strangely changed; it was very early, and the skies were
overcast, and in the clouded twilight we could scarcely see to do our
work. Fitz-Adams seemed to be in no hurry; he was silent, and moved
nervously. I wondered what this might portend, and braced myself for
finality. It was very hard. I was learning to know the men; they
ignored me still, but I was sure that I understood them better, and my
liking for them grew each day, and earnestly I wished to stay, in the
hope of winning a footing in the camp, and some terms of fellowship
with the men.
Fitz-Adams had stopped working now, and he stood leaning on the rigging
as he spoke to me. There was a mildness in his tone and a tentative
expectancy, as though an uncomfortable suspicion had dawned upon him,
and he feared to verify it.
"Say, Buddy, have you ever been to school?"
"Yes," I said.
There was silence for a minute, and the tone in which Fitz-Adams broke
it was awestruck.
"Say, Buddy, have you got a education?"
"I've had good advantages."
And then eagerly from him:
"Major, can you figure?"
It was my inning now, and I liked it, and I was guilty of saying that,
within narrow limits, I could.
"Will you do my accounts for me, Major?"
"I will, with pleasure."
Fitz-Adams drew a deep breath, and his voice fell to a lower tone.
"Well, that'll be a good thing for me. I never had no schooling, and
Sam the Book-keeper, he don't seem to know much more'n me. I guess I
lost pretty nigh on to two thousand dollars on my contracts last year,
on account of not knowing how to figure. Say, Major, this is pretty
hard work for you; you suit yourself about this work, and help me with
the accounts. Of course, I--I--I--didn't know----"
"Oh, drop it, Fitz-Adams!" I said. "We understand each other. I'll be
glad to look after the accounts as long as I stay; but it's growing
light now, and let's get on this load."
And so I won a place in the camp, and got myself on human terms with
the boss. Fitz-Adams never referred to the matter again, but treated me
in a perfectly manly, straightforward way, taking patiently my clumsy
work as a woodsman, and accepting, as a matter of course, my help with
the accounts, and even consulting me, at times, in certain details
of the work. It was one of these consultations which brought a rare
opportunity.
I had won my way with the boss, not by virtue of an education, but
actually upon the basis of an acquaintance with elementary arithmetic.
When I came to look at the accounts, it was not a question of
book-keeping that was involved, but simple addition and multiplication
and division, in all of which branches both Fitz-Adams and Sam the
Book-keeper were lamentably weak, so weak, in fact, that they felt no
real confidence in their results.
But my way with the men was yet to make. They were not uncivil,
but they would none of me. To them I was still an outsider, "an
inharmonious figure in their club," and, whatever may have been the
change in my relations with the boss, the men were in no way bound to
recognize me.
One morning Fitz-Adams and I stood together in his rig, as he was
driving up the "corduroy road" to the place on the mountain where the
crew were at work. Presently he pointed out to me, about forty yards up
the steep ascent no our left, some long, straggling piles of bark that
perched there, like peasants' huts over a precipice in the Alps.
"I don't know how to go at that bark," he said with a frown. "You can't
get a wagon there, nor yet a dray; and it's so brittle that if you
slide it down, you'll have nothing but chips to cart to the tannery,
and the man that tries to carry it down--well, it's a three or four
days' job, and he'll have his neck broke sure."
I said that I would look at it. I was "piling bark" now on my own
account, and Toler had another "Buddy," a big, bouncing Irish Hercules,
who had lately come to camp, and who soon won distinction by reason of
the songs he sung. They were wonderful songs; long beyond belief, and
they told the loves and woes of truly wonderful people.
Buddy had early made known his talent, and on his first evening in camp
he was peremptorily told to sing. It was after supper. He was sitting,
much at home, on the bench behind the stove, and was smoking. Instantly
he took his pipe from his mouth, and cleared his throat; then, laying
his hands on his knees, he sang, swaying meanwhile in time with the
monotonous cadences of that strange verse, which went on and on and
on for quite half an hour, while the men listened open-eyed, and
punctuated the sentiment with profane approval.
When I examined the bark-piles I found that transferring them to the
"corduroy road" below was a matter of carrying the bark in small loads
on one's back, and of having a secure footing for the descent.
On the next morning I took a pick and spade, and first cut a series of
steps to the ledge where the bark lay piled. After a little practice, I
learned to make up a load, by selecting a broad, stout slab of bark and
packing the smaller pieces upon it. Then stooping under the load, as
it lay ready on the edge of a pile, I easily shifted it to my back and
head; and holding it with one hand, while the other was free to help
maintain my balance, I carefully picked a way down the steep decline.
It probably appeared a far more difficult and dangerous feat than
it really was; and with a load of bark upon my back, I was more
than ever an outlandish figure to the men, more in keeping with the
Königsstuhl and the valley of the Neckar than with Fitz-Adams's Camp in
the Alleghanies. But the actual accomplishment of the work seemed to
interest them, and the teamsters used to stop and watch me in silence,
and then drive off, swearing in low tones.
One evening the whole returning crew caught me at the job. The men
stood still, and having watched a descent, they examined the bark piled
high at the roadside, and then walked on, commenting among themselves.
That night in Camp several of them spoke to me, calling me "Major"
after Fitz-Adams's manner.
It was the beginning of more personal acquaintance with the men. I
can but like them. In the fortnight and more of my stay I cannot lay
claim to having got on intimate terms with them. But they seem to me a
truthful, high-spirited, hard-working, generous set of men. They swear
like fiends incarnate, and when they can, they drink, and they all have
"rogued and ranged in their time." On grounds of high morality there is
no possible justification for them. But these are men who were born and
bred to vicious living; and the wonder is not that they are bad, but
that in all their blasting departure from the good, there yet survives
in them the vital power of return.
There is Old Man Toler. He is certainly an exception in point of birth
and earliest breeding, but he has been in the lumber business more
or less, he tells me, since he was a boy of fourteen. There was one
important period taken out, when, as a young man, he enlisted, and
served in the Army of the Potomac, from the spring of 1862 until
the end of the Civil War. He is native-born, and has the intelligent
patriotism of a true American. In our walks together to and from our
work, I delighted in his talk about the war period in his life. His
perspective as a private soldier was so true, so thoroughly free from
the towering obtrusion of his own experiences. These were almost lost
in his absorbing interest in the working out of great events. He
knew the war thoroughly from the point of view of the army. He knew
the service, and had borne his part in hardship and in action with a
distinct sense of personal responsibility to the subject and aim of it
all. This was luminous in what he said, and never from his declaration
of it, but in the absence of such declaration, and in the loss of self
in the large action of which he felt himself a part.
There was much in Toler that rang true, and I regretted the more
that he evidently preferred to talk little about himself, and almost
never of his personal views. My wonder at his being a common hand
in camp grew, until one day, in talking with Black Bob, I learned a
reason. Black Bob, quite of his own accord, had instituted a series of
comparisons among the men.
"There's Fitz-Adams and his brother," he was saying, "they're about
as good a pair of lumbermen as you'll find. But they ain't the best in
this camp. There's a man here that knows more about this business than
any three other men, and that's Old Man Toler. His father was a big
lumberman before him, and Toler was brought up thorough to the work,
and he's had many a camp of his own, and made lots of money in his
time. But he ain't ever kept none, and he never will." And Black Bob
winked significantly, and ostentatiously wiped his mouth.
There is an "old soldier" of quite another type in camp. It is Sam the
Book-keeper. Work on the accounts has brought me into close relations
with Sam. He is a large, good-humored, fair-haired and ruddy-faced
American, who by no means shows his more than fifty years. It is
pathetic to watch his struggles with the lines of figures, as he tries
to add them up; and the situation is really serious, for almost never
can he get the same result twice.
He and I were working one evening in the office, and had straightened
matters out to a certain point. Sam was in high spirits as a result.
He wished to talk. There was a handy explanation of his ignorance of
figures, and he wanted me to know it. He chiefly played truant from
school, he said, when he was a boy at home on his father's farm; and
at the age of eleven he ran away for good, allured by the fascination
of life on a canal-boat; and ever since that time he had shifted for
himself.
And now Sam was fairly started in his history; but the narrative leaped
suddenly to his career as a soldier. His war experiences included the
battle of Bull Run and the capture of Savannah. Sam's knowledge of
campaigns was not exhaustive, and his most vivid memories of historic
events were all of a personal nature, which is certainly not unnatural.
From his own frank statement, he seems to have been among the first
to leave the field at Bull Run. With another member of his company he
reached Washington, rather worn and dusty, but really none the worse
for a cross-country sprint.
Once in the city, they were soon hailed by an acquaintance, who took
them in hand with the remark that "he knew just the thing for them."
They were simply to follow him to Pennsylvania Avenue, and obey his
directions. His first was that they should limp, and they limped; and
he led them, limping, to certain rooms on the avenue, where thoughtful
preparation had been made for the care of the wounded. Here they were
received with marked attention, and after having been asked as to
whether they were "just from the front," and to which regiment they
belonged, they were put in the care of certain volunteer nurses. These
ladies, with their own hands, bared the soldiers' feet, and washed
them, and then dressed them in clean socks and comfortable slippers,
which the men were to wear until quite well again. At this refuge Sam
and his companion, and many another soldier "from the front," were
given bed and board as long as they found it convenient to remain.
With cheerful appreciation of the humor of it, Sam described the
labored way in which his partner and he would limp down the avenue each
morning, until they had turned a corner; and then, instantly restored
to perfect soundness, they would make for the nearest saloon. They
played this game until their cash was gone; then they felt compelled to
rejoin their regiment, which was encamped near Arlington.
That was the beginning of Sam's career as a soldier. It ended at
Savannah. After the capture of the city, and as General Sherman's army
was setting out on the march to Richmond, Sam found himself one of a
squad ordered to remain behind, for the purpose of assisting the United
States Excise Officers.
The men had quarters in a large stone building, which was given over
entirely to their use. The work was much to their taste. Every day they
shrewdly searched the city for contraband liquor, and not infrequently
they unearthed a den where kegs of whiskey were concealed. Some of
these they always smuggled to their own quarters, and the rest they
handed over to the excise officers. Orgies that were fired with
unfailing rum consumed the greater part of every night, and formed an
epoch in Sam's history upon which he reflects with lasting satisfaction.
Most of the men in camp are younger than Old Man Toler and Sam the
Book-keeper, and of the younger set I have made the acquaintance
of "Long-nosed Harry." Harry is barely thirty and already a man of
considerable experience. When fairly started, he can tell capital tales
of how he has "beat his way" on long journeys through the country, and
of narrow escapes from the "cops," and of other occasions when he has
not escaped. Wherever in this country the railways have penetrated,
Harry seems to have gone, and he has gathered on his wanderings a fund
of curious information, as though there were a nether side of things,
and he had grown familiar with that in contrast with the surface that
is exposed to the eye of the ordinary traveller.
Harry's face confirms his account of a career not unfamiliar with
the police. A long thin face it is, with small dark eyes set close
together, a narrow, thin-lipped mouth, a receding chin, and an
abnormally long nose, which has gained nothing in point of beauty by
having been broken in a fight with a negro at Atlantic City.
He is of glib speech, and he has at command a long repertory of songs
of the vaudeville variety, and this enhances his standing among the
men. Besides, Harry can read aloud, as I learned one day when a stray
newspaper found its way into the camp. He read with a certain swift
readiness that held your interest, and you soon grew excited in an
effort to recognize old acquaintances in the strangely accented longer
words, which were plainly unintelligible to Harry and his hearers,
while yet the general sense of what was read was obviously clear.
Harry and I sat talking together one Sunday evening. We had a corner
of the lobby to ourselves. Suddenly, without apparent connection with
what we had been saying, he gave me one of those rare confidences
which reveal, as by a flash of supernatural light, the very heart of a
man's life, and then leave you awed and speechless, in the presence of
eternal verities.
It was a fragment of personal history, very short, and it was told
with the directness and simplicity of truth itself. He had been married
six years before. His wife was a delicate girl who lived for only two
years after Harry married her. He was a brakeman on a freight-train
then. He used to look forward to his "off-day" with a feeling, he said,
that "made life worth living." And they were convenient, too, those
"off-days"; for in them he did the washing, and the scrubbing, and
whatever else of accumulated housework he could spare his wife. But she
died. And there was nothing more in life for Harry; so he drifted back
into the old way, the way of all the men, a life of alternate work and
debauch.
* * * * * * * *
"Karl the Swede" is the only Scandinavian in the crew, which, like
the other gangs of workmen which I have known, is exceedingly
heterogeneous in character. There is nothing remarkable about Karl.
He is a fair-haired, blue-eyed, stocky youth of one-and-twenty, and
as hard-drinking, hard-working a woodsman as any of them. But Karl
happens to be the only man who, during my stay in camp, has met with
an accident. It was yesterday morning. The men were trimming logs,
and "skidding" them at a point on the mountain a mile or more from
camp, and I was piling bark not far from the "skid-ways." At a little
before noon I heard the buckboard go jolting over the bowlders on the
mountain-road; and a few minutes later there rang through the forest
Fitz-Adams's call to dinner.
I set out for the nearest skid-way, where the men were gathering, when
suddenly I came upon Karl lying at length in a clump of myrtle, with
one foot extended upon a rock, and bare, except for a woollen sock that
was bound tightly around the instep. What had happened was clear in an
instant. The sock was saturated with blood, and a dark, clotted stream
stained the foot, and a pool of blood had formed on the surface of the
rock. I sat down beside him, and Karl first showed me in his boot a
clean cut three inches long, where the axe-blade had entered. Then he
unwrapped the sock, and lifting from the wound a quid of pulpy tobacco,
he exposed a gash where the skin and shallow flesh lay open to the
bone. The flow of blood had nearly ceased, for the tobacco had acted
as a styptic; and Karl quickly reapplied it, and again bound the wound
tightly with his sock.
All the while he acted in a perfectly impersonal manner, as though he
were in no way directly concerned in the accident, which was simply
a phenomenon of common interest to us both. He betrayed no trace
of suffering nor even of annoyance at the discomfort of the mishap;
and soon he began to speak of it, in his broken English, with like
impersonality.
"Fitz-Adams, you know, would take him to camp in the buckboard after
dinner, and would see that he got safe to English Centre, where the
doctor would dress the wound. That would do very well until he reached
Williamsport; but he must go to Williamsport, and that was the worst of
it; for it would be several weeks before he could get back to camp, and
then, between drunks and the doctor's bills, his savings would be all
gone."
This taken-for-granted attitude toward riotous living is strikingly
characteristic. I have noticed it repeatedly among the men. They
speak of past and prospective debauches with the _naïveté_ of callow
undergraduates, except that among the lumbermen there is no sense of
credit or distinction attaching to vice; it is simply inherent in the
order of things. This is by no means a professed creed. Profession,
when there is any, is all in the other direction, and is of the nature
of the "homage that vice pays to virtue." It is simply in the natural
and unpremeditated speech and action of the men that you detect this
attitude of mind.
The time spent at the camp is, in one aspect of it, a course of
training, a cumulative storage of energy, financial and physical,
against a future expenditure in the sudden outburst of a grand carouse.
It has been interesting to notice what have appeared to be the
instinctive precautions of the men. There seems to be an established
custom of great strength that prohibits the keeping of spirits in
camp. And gambling is strangely infrequent. I have heard hints of
memorable epochs, when, like an epidemic, gambling has swept the camp
with fearful force, and there is a wholesome fear of its return. I
was struck with this one night, when, without apparent warning, the
customary "High, Low, Jack and the Game" gave place to poker, and an
excited crowd stood round the table and watched; and Fitz-Adams had to
go up to the office to bring down wages due to the players. But the
outbreak spent itself without becoming epidemic this time, and you
could feel the relief among the men when "Phil the Farmer" and "Irish
Mike" agreed to stand their loss of about ten dollars each, and not
continue the game.
"High, Low, Jack" is invariable after supper, and lends itself with
singular sociability to the pleasure of the men. There is but one pack
of cards, and only one table in the lobby. A four-handed game is begun
immediately after supper, the opposite men playing partners. A game is
not long; and at its end the beaten partners give place to a new pair,
and this course continues until all the members of the crew have had a
hand.
* * * * * * * *
In looking over this chapter I see that I have drawn a very inadequate
picture of Fitz-Adams. A hard swearer he certainly is, but Black Bob
was right in assuring me that there is more ignorance than malice in
his habitual maledictions.
First of all, Fitz-Adams is an admirable workman. To any department of
the work of lumbermen he can lend a hand of highest efficiency. And
his, in a marked degree, are the manual skill and resourceful ingenuity
which are characteristic of the men. Only Fitz-Adams is exceptional in
these particulars, like Old Man Toler. With them this manual skill, for
instance, is like the sure touch of a master handicraftsman.
One morning, while at work with Old Man Toler, I openly admired his
handling of an axe. Toler was standing on a log which obstructed our
way, and which he was about to cut in two. He drew the axe-blade up the
side of the log between his feet. "Do you see that scratch?" he said,
and then he swung the axe above his head, and brought it down with a
sweeping stroke. The blade entered the bark exactly where the scratch
had been. Five times running, Toler performed this feat, never missing
his mark by the fraction of an inch, and then he turned to me. "I've
used an axe so long, Buddy," he said, "that I can split hairs with a
good one now."
But even more than a thorough woodsman, Fitz-Adams is a superb
overseer. Under his shrewd foresight and direction, the whole work of
the crew is urged forward with resistless energy. He knows exactly what
each man is doing, and whether or not the work is well done.
His planning of the work and his effective organizing and directing
toward its accomplishment are, no doubt, his strongest points; but
dramatically considered, although he is perfectly unconscious of the
effect, he shows to greatest advantage when he is personally leading
the crew in an attack upon a difficult situation. All his powers are
well in evidence then, and not least of all his power of speech. You
have actual sight at such times of one of Carlyle's heroes, a "captain
of industry," to whom there are no insurmountable difficulties, no
"impossibilities," but who brings order out of chaos, by the sheer
force of indomitable energy.
With this high efficiency his ignorance is in striking contrast. He
can write his name, and there his educational equipment ends. His
helplessness in the presence of figures is as pathetic and quite as
serious as is Sam the Book-keeper's. But Fitz-Adams is a young man,
barely thirty, I should say. Almost his earliest memory is that of
being a mule-driver in one of the mines near Wilkesbarre. From this he
went to picking slate in a breaker. Now he is a jobber, employing a
large crew, and undertaking contracts which involve considerable sums
of money. There has been offered to him, and it is still open, the
position of overseer in a far larger enterprise than his own, where,
personally, he would run none of the business risk; but he has confided
to me that he does not dare to accept the place owing to his lack of
even elementary education. In this connection he once asked me whether
I thought that he might yet go to school. I did think so with emphasis,
and I gave him so many reasons for this opinion, and cited so many
examples of men as old as he and older who were at school, that he
really warmed to it as a practicable plan.
* * * * * * * *
The rain stopped hours ago, and it is turning very cold, and snow has
begun to fall. Fitz-Adams got back from English Centre long before
dinner, and there is evidence that he has not been drinking. I have
consulted him on the matter of leaving, and he has urged me to stay,
and has offered me permanent employment; but he says that, if I must
be off, and am bent on going westward, I would better get as far as
Hoytville as soon as possible, else I may run the risk of encountering
roads blocked with snow. Then, for the first time, he introduced the
subject of wages, and asked me what I thought was "right." I said that
before coming to the camp, I had worked for a farmer, and had been
given seventy-five cents a day and my keep; and I added that, if this
rate of wage seemed fair to him, it would suit me perfectly. He agreed
at once, and now I am a capitalist. Soon I shall set out for Hoytville,
which is, I judge, a matter of two or three hours' walk from here.
Fitz-Adams has given me careful directions about the road, and has
shown the deepest interest in my plan of getting West, and has urged
me to write to him.
The crew are all gone to work, and I shall not see them. They were off
as soon as the storm slackened. All were keen to go, and so be spared
the misery of a day of enforced idleness, all except "Old Pete," and he
is past being keen. He is over sixty, and has a strongly marked Celtic
face, deeply furrowed with the lines of age and pain. He works with
the crew, but in camp he sits alone on the bench opposite the stove,
with the overalls and shirts hanging over him. When not at work he sits
there hour after hour, his large, muscular frame bent forward, and his
elbows resting on his knees, and there he endures, in the dumb agony of
animal pain, the torment of rheumatism in his legs. He seldom speaks,
and never of his sufferings--only sometimes in comically sententious
response to something that has interested him. And the men let him
alone, knowing by a true intuition that he prefers it so.
After the rain let up I happened to pass through the lobby as the men
were starting for their work. Old Pete was the last to move. I watched
him rising slowly to his feet. In spite of him, his face drew the
picture of the hideous pain he bore, but through it shone the clear
courage of a man, and his eyes reflected the grim humor of a thought
that touched his native sense, and he smiled as he said:
"We don't have to work; we can starve."
* * * * * * * *
I have spent three Sundays in the woods. On the first I fled cravenly
into the forest, hugging a book from out my pack, and the hours flew
swiftly along the pages. The second Sunday was another glorious autumn
day. By that time I had won a modest place in camp, and could hold up
my head with due respect among the men. I asked several of them whether
there was any church service at English Centre. They thought that there
was, but they would take no stock at all in my plan of discovery.
Alone I set out for the village. There was perfect quiet in the
mountains, no sound of axe or saw, nor crash of falling trees, nor
rumble of bark-wagons; only the tuneful flow and splash of the run,
which caught the living sunlight, and flashed it back in radiance
through the flushing air, that quivered in the ecstasy of buoyant
life. The fire of life flamed in the glowing hues of autumn, and
burned with white heat in the hoar-frost which clung to the shaded
crevices in the rocks, and along the blades of seared grass, and on the
fringe of fallen leaves. And I was free, as free and careless as the
mountain-stream, and before me was a blessed day of rest!
Every foot of the road was strangely familiar, but the familiarity
lay in an intimate association with some distant past, as of earliest
childhood. There was the camp by the dam, and there the Irishman's
cabin, where the cow was still munching straw, and the sow wallowing
in the mire. Then I came to the fork in the road, where one way led to
Wolf's Run. It was a lifetime since I had gone up that way, feeling as
cocky as a wedding-guest, and soon had come down again "a sadder and
a wiser man." I felt like another Rip Van Winkle as I re-entered the
village, but the marvel lay in there being no change at all, except in
the Sunday calm which now possessed the place.
The post-office is in a private house, and I knocked in some
uncertainty of being able to get my letters; but the postmistress gave
them to me with obliging readiness, and with them a cordial invitation
to attend the Sunday-school, which, she said, was the only service of
that morning. Her invitation was more welcome than she knew, for it was
the first of its kind to reach me as a proletaire.
I read my letters, and then went to the church, which stands at the end
of the village street. The service was beginning. As superintendent
the postmistress was in charge. There were no men present. About thirty
women and girls, and half a dozen boys, made up the school. The conduct
of the service I thought intensely interesting. The superintendent was
entirely at home in her place, and she valued the opportunity.
When the classes grouped themselves for the study of the lesson, a
teacher was lacking. I was asked to take the place, and was startled
at finding myself in charge of a class of village belles. What their
feeling toward the arrangement was, I could only guess; but it was
clear that they were not accustomed to being taught by an unshaven,
unshorn woodsman, in rough clothes, and boots covered with patches. But
the lesson was in my favor; it was the incident of the washing of the
disciples' feet at the last Passover. I soon forgot my embarrassment in
the interest of the text, and in an atmosphere of serious study.
Last Sunday I went again to the Sunday-school, and I had my former
class to teach. Some preparation had been possible during the week,
and the hour passed successfully. Among the announcements was one of a
prayer-meeting to be held that night.
I reached the church at the hour of the evening service. I opened the
door, and there sat a crowded congregation in waiting. The back seats
on both sides of the aisle were solid ranks of men, lumbermen, and
teamsters, and tannery hands, many of them in their working-clothes.
There were women and children scattered through the pews farther up,
and some boys had overflowed upon the pulpit steps, but most of the
company were men.
There was no one in the minister's seat, but the postmistress was in
place at the organ, and as I entered, she nodded to me in evident
expectation of my joining her. I walked forward, and she stepped out
into the aisle to meet me.
"It's time to begin," she said, quietly.
"Is your minister not come yet?" I asked.
"Oh, you're going to speak to-night, you know."
I did not know. For an instant I knew only that there was a cold,
hard grip upon my heart which seemed to hold it still, and that in my
brain there had begun a mad dance of all that I ever thought I knew.
But from out the turmoil a sane thought emerged: "This is a company
of working-people who are come to hear a fellow-workman speak to them
about our deepest needs." In another moment I was cooler, and a
strange, unreasoning peace ensued.
I asked the postmistress to select some hymns. She handed me a list,
chosen with perfect knowledge of those which the congregation most
enjoyed. The people were soon singing, thinly at first; but the
familiar melody spread, and carried with it a sense of solidarity,
in which self was merged and lost, and the swelling sound rolled on,
deepening with the voices of the men. Soon it recalled college-chapel,
with the students in a mood to sing, and "Ein' Feste Burg" mounting in
the majesty of that deep-toned hymn, until the vaulted ceilings rock,
and the archangels above the chancel seem to join in the splendid
volume of high praise!
But more helpful to me than the singing was the sight of familiar
faces. Black Bob stood towering like another Saul above the mass of
men; and at his side was one of our teamsters who lives in the village,
and with whom I had often loaded bark. Near the door--I was not quite
sure at first, but there could be no mistake--near the door was
Fitz-Adams, and not far from him Long-nosed Harry and Phil the Farmer
stood together.
I was trembling when I began to speak, trembling with awful fear, a
fear that was yet a solemn joy; for I had vision then of human hearts
hungering to be fed, and, as a sharer in their need, I knew that it was
given to me to point them to the Bread of Life.
I could speak to them now, for with greater clearness I could see these
fellow-workers as they were--strong, brave men who win the mastery
which comes to those who clear the way for progress, giving play, in
their natural living, to the forces which make men free, and growing
strong in heart and in the will to do, as they grow strong of arm and
catch the rough cunning of their trade; men of many races, yet meeting
on the common ground of men all free and under equal chance to make
their way; knowing no differences but those of personality, and winning
their places in the crew, each man according to his kind, and his
rewards according to his skill.
Such were they in their outward lives, the physical life within them
growing in living ways, and making them the true, efficient workmen
that they were. But of the inner life that makes us men, that life
wherein we act from choice, and must "give account of the deeds done in
the body," that range of action which we call moral, where conscience
speaks to us in words of command, there they knew no mastery at all,
and, least of all, the mastery of the moralist.
To them God was a moral ruler, dwelling afar from the daily life
of men, and righteousness was a slavish obedience to His laws, and
religion a mystic somewhat which was good for women and children and
weak men.
And yet deep in their own hearts was their supremest need. Life as they
knew it brought to them no satisfaction for its craving want. It was
not so in other things; they knew their work; and in the overcoming
of its difficulties, they had felt the fierce joy of conquest. But
confronted with temptations, the difficulties of their inner life,
there they had no strength; and lust and passion mastered them, and
left their real desire unsatisfied. Here, in respect of mastery, they
were slaves, and as regards life, they were dead, having only the need
of life.
There, then, was their want; it was for Life, abundant, victorious Life.
And now I could speak to them of God; of Him "who is not far from every
one of us, for in Him we live, and move, and have our being;" the
living God who reveals Himself in all life, and who became incarnate in
the Son of Man, and who speaks to us in human words which go straight
to our seeking hearts: "I am the way, the truth, and the life."
"I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more
abundantly." "The words that I speak unto you, they are life."
"Strong Son of God!" whose living words quicken us from the death of
sin and set us free. By whose grace we are "renewed in the whole man
after His image, and enabled, more and more, to die unto sin and live
unto righteousness." Who was "made sin for us, who knew no sin; that
we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." "Who His own self
bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin,
should live unto righteousness." Whose death was not a reconcilement of
God to us, but was "God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself."
Whose Gospel is the glad tidings of this reconciliation, and we are
become "ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we
pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."
And then we prayed, confessing our sinful state, our bondage, our death
in sin, and pleading that we might be "transformed by the renewing of
our minds, that we might prove what is that good, and acceptable, and
perfect will of God."
* * * * * * * *
Now that I am on the eve of leaving Fitz-Adams's Camp, I cannot hide
from myself my eagerness to go. I have real regrets; for while two
weeks and as many days do not constitute a long period, yet time is
purely relative, and I shall have a livelier memory of the camp and
of certain of the men, and a keener interest in them, than I have for
places and men with whom my association has been much longer.
But of the feelings of which I am conscious at leaving, I am surprised
at the intensity of the longing to know what has happened during the
three weeks, nearly, since I have seen a newspaper from the great
world. I thought little of it as the days passed, but now I am all
aglow with desire for news about the progress of the campaigns in New
York and Massachusetts and Ohio. And then the last word from abroad
had piqued one's curiosity to the utmost as to possible results. Mr.
Smith, the leader of the House of Commons, I know is dead; and as I was
leaving Williamsport for the woods, I saw upon the bulletin-boards the
announcement of Mr. Parnell's sudden death; but of the political effect
of these events no word has reached me. Has Mr. Balfour or Mr. Goschen
succeeded to the leadership of the House? And if Mr. Balfour became the
First Lord of the Treasury, does he retain the Chief Secretaryship
for Ireland? And has the death of Mr. Parnell brought about a reunion
between Parnellites and. M'Carthyites, or is the breach as hopeless as
ever?
It will be intensely interesting to find answers to these questions and
to many more; but after all I am sincerely sorry to leave the camp,
and as I go up now to say good-by to Fitz-Adams, who is in his office,
it is with the knowledge that I am parting from a man whom it is an
inspiration to have known.
The Workers--The East
By WALTER A. WYCKOFF
With five full-page Illustrations. 270 pp. 12mo, $1.25
_CONTENTS:--The Adjustment--A Day-Laborer at West Point--A Hotel
Porter--A Hired Man at an Asylum--A Farm Hand--In a Logging Camp._
In this first volume of a college man's narrative of his two years'
experience as a day-laborer, he deals entirely with rural occupations
and rural conditions. He is a day-laborer in an uncrowded market.
He is in close contact with poverty, but not with despair. This is
a side of the labor question which has been very much neglected by
sociologists, and it forms an invaluable introduction to the more
strenuous conditions of the second volume. Professor Wyckoff writes
with the literary skill of a novelist, and the scrupulous accuracy of a
scientist.
"We doubt if any American of the employer class can read it
without a feeling that the picture tells a story of the whole
civilization in which he lives. It is a thoroughly American book,
and could have been written in no other country."--_The Evening
Post_, New York.
"The volume is packed with living faces; they are there in the air
before one in all their delightful homely individuality, their
recognizable truth to human nature."--_The Weekly Sun_, London.
"This writer at least brings our fellows of the ditch and the
woods closer to our sympathies."--_The Dial_, Chicago.
"The project itself was a brave one and bravely carried
out."--_The Observer_, New York.
"The valuable features of the book are the observations of Mr.
Wyckoff on the habits of working men, their genuine democracy and
the sore temptations which are offered by the saloon to men who
have not formed the reading habit, and who have no resources for
amusement."--_The Chronicle_, San Francisco.
"We regard it as much the most enlightening as well as
incomparably the most interesting sociological work of the
year."--_The Outlook_, New York.
"It is doubtful if a more interesting contribution to social
science than this work of Professor Wyckoff's has ever been
written."--_The Interior_, Chicago.
The Workers--The West
By WALTER A. WYCKOFF
With 32 full-page Illustrations by W. R. Leigh 12mo, $1.50
_CONTENTS:--In the Army of the Unemployed (Chicago)--A Factory
Hand--Among the Revolutionaries--A Road-Builder of the World's
Fair Grounds--From Chicago to Denver--A Burro Puncher on the
Plains._
In this volume Mr. Wyckoff continues his "experiment in reality" in the
crowded labor-market of Chicago. He suffers with the lowest classes of
the unemployed, and works himself to a better condition; he studies
organized labor in a great factory; he analyzes social discontent with
the anarchists; and he works his way to the Pacific coast through the
great wheat farms, toils in deep mines, and drives a burro across the
desolate plains. This closes one of the most romantic narratives ever
written by a scholar, and one of the most valuable to all classes. It
is a contribution to the study of humanity.
"Nobody could read the present instalment of 'The Workers' in the
West without feeling as never before the reality of the suffering
which night after night and day after day, faces thousands upon
thousands of homeless, hopeless working men in the great cities of
our 'prosperous' country."--_The Commons_, Chicago.
"The story is Dantesque in its realism, for it is the realest
of the horrible real that it tells of."--_The City and State_,
Philadelphia.
"Mr. Leigh's illustrations could not be improved; they are simply
perfect. We believe the American public is following Mr. Wyckoff's
papers with intense interest, for they get right down to life
as no previous study of this kind has done."--_The Homestead_,
Springfield, Mass.
"These are unique sociological studies, in the nature of what may
be called laboratory work."--_The Watchman_, Boston.
"His 'experiment' is a vitally interesting one--a young college
graduate, he is trying to see what are the chances for an
honest, strong man to earn his living."--_The National Tribune_,
Washington.
"This is so vividly written that one's heart aches for the
miserable creatures it describes."--_The Irrigation Age_, Chicago.
"These articles will make every reader think of the
working-classes with new and painful interest."--_The Bulletin_,
Pittsburg, Pa.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers
NEW YORK