CHAPTER XXI

_The Ichabod of Mule-rooms, some Drastic Musing, College

at my Finger-tips, the Mill People wait to let me pass

and I Am Waved into the World by a Blind Woman_ 273

_Illustrations_

THEN THE EPILEPTIC OCTOGENARIAN LET ME GO AND THE PAUPER

LINE WENT IN BEFORE THE PARISH CLERK FOR THE CHARITY

SHILLING _Frontispiece_

FACING

PAGE

WHEN THE TRAIN STARTED FOR LIVERPOOL, I COUNTED MY PENNIES

WHILE MY AUNT WEPT BITTERLY 52

PAT AND TIM LED ME TO THE CHARLES STREET DUMPING GROUND--WHICH

WAS THE NEIGHBORHOOD GEHENNA 78

I WAS GIVEN A BROOM, AND THEN I FOUND MYSELF ALONE WITH MARY 122

“PETER-ONE-LEG-AND-A-HALF” LED US AT NIGHT OVER HIGH BOARD

FENCES 146

THE SPINNERS WOULD NOT STOP THEIR MULES WHILE I CLEANED THE

WHEELS 170

HE PLUCKED THE VENERABLE BEARD OF A SOMNOLENT HEBREW 196

THE GANG BEGAN TO HOLD “SURPRISE PARTIES” FOR THE GIRLS IN

THE MILL 246

THROUGH THE MILL

_Chapter I. A Mixture of Fish, Wrangles, and Beer_

THROUGH THE MILL

[Illustration]

_Chapter I. A Mixture of Fish, Wrangles, and Beer_

My tenth birthday was celebrated in northern England, almost within

hailing distance of the Irish Sea. Chaddy Ashworth, the green-grocer’s

son, helped me eat the birthday cake, with the ten burnt currants on

its buttered top.

As old Bill Scroggs was wont to boast: “Hadfield was in the right

proper place, it being in the best shire in the Kingdom. Darby-shir

(Derbyshire) is where Mr. George Eliot (only he said ‘Helliot’) got

his ‘Adam Bede’ frum (only he said ‘Hadam Bede’). Darby-shir is where

Hum-fry Ward (he pronounced it ‘Waard’) placed the ‘Histry o’ Davvid

Grieve.’ If that don’t top off the glory, it is Darby-shir that has

geen to the waarld Florence Nightengale, Hangel of the British Harmy!”

It was in the first of those ten years that I had been bereft of my

parents and had gone to live with my Aunt Millie and Uncle Stanwood.

In commenting on her benevolence in taking me, Aunt Millie often said:

“If it had been that none of my own four babbies had died, I don’t know

what you’d have done, I’m sure. I shouldn’t have taken you!”

But there I was, a very lucky lad indeed to have a home with a

middle-class tradesman in Station Road. My uncle’s property consisted

of a corner shop and an adjoining house. The door of the shop looked

out upon the main, cobbled thoroughfare, and upon an alleyway which

ended at a coffin-maker’s, where all the workhouse coffins were

manufactured. We passed back and forth to the shop through a low,

mysterious door, which in “The Mysteries of Udolpho” would have

figured in exciting, ghostly episodes, so was it hidden in darkness

in the unlighted storeroom from which it led. As for the shop itself,

it was a great fish odor, for its counters, shelves and floor had

held nothing else for years and years. The poultry came only in odd

seasons, but fish was always with us: blue mussels, scalloped cockles,

crabs and lobsters, mossy mussels, for shell fish: sole, conger eels,

haddock, cod, mackerel, herring, shrimps, flake and many other sorts

for the regular fish. Then, of course, there were the smoked kind:

bloaters, red herrings, kippered herring, finnan haddock, and salt cod.

In the summer the fish were always displayed outside, with ice and

watercresses for their beds, on white platters. Then, too, there were

platters of opened mussels a little brighter than gold in settings of

blue. My uncle always allowed me to cut open the cod so that I might

have the fishhooks they had swallowed. There was not a shopkeeper in

the row that had half as much artistic window display skill as had

Uncle Stanwood. He was always picking up “pointers” in Manchester. When

the giant ray came in from Grimsby, the weavers were always treated to

a window display twice more exciting than the butcher offered every

Christmas, when he sat pink pigs in chairs in natural human postures,

their bodies glorified in Christmas tinsel. Uncle Stanwood took

those giant fish, monstrous, slimy, ugly nightmares, sat them in low

chairs, with tail-flappers curled comically forward, with iron rimmed

spectacles on their snouts, a dented derby aslant beady eyes, and a

warden’s clay pipe prodded into a silly mouth--all so clownish a sight

that the weavers and spinners never tired of laughing over it.

But while Uncle Stanwood was ambitious enough in his business, seeking

“independence,” which, to the British tradesman, represents freedom

from work and therefore, “gentlemanliness,” though he knew the fine

art of window display and was a good pedler, he was never intended

by nature to impress the world with the fact of his presence in it.

He lacked will power. He was not self-assertive enough at critical

times. The only time when he did call attention to himself was when

he took “Bob,” our one-eyed horse, and peddled fish, humorously

shouting through the streets, “Mussels and cockles alive! Buy ’em

alive! Kill ’em as you want ’em!” At all other times, the “Blue Sign”

and the “Linnet’s Nest,” our public-houses, could lure him away from

his business very readily. Uncle Stanwood had a conspicuous artistic

nature and training, and it was in these public-houses where he could

display his talents to the best advantage. He could play a flute

and also “vamp” on a piano. True his flute-playing was limited to

“Easy Pieces,” and his piano “vamping” was little more than playing

variations on sets of chords in all the various keys, with every now

and then a one-finger-air, set off very well by a vamp, but he could

get a perfunctory morsel of applause for whatever skill he had, and

very few of the solo singers in concerts attempted to entertain in

those public-houses without having “Stan” Brindin “tickle it up” for

them. In regard to his piano-playing, uncle had unbounded confidence.

He could give the accompaniment to the newest ballad without much

difficulty. The singer would stand up before the piano and say, “Stan,

hast’ ’eard that new piece, just out in t’ music ’alls, ‘The Rattling

Seaman?’”

“No,” uncle would say, “but I know I can ‘vamp’ it for thee, Jud. Hum

it o’er a bar or two. What key is’t in?” “I don’t know _key_,” would

respond the singer, “but it goes like this,” and there would ensue a

humming during which uncle would desperately finger his set of chords,

cocking his ear to match the piano with the singer’s notes, and the

loud crash of a fingerful of notes would suddenly indicate that

connections had been made. Then, in triumph, uncle would say, “Let me

play the Introduction, Jud!” and with remarkable facility he would stir

the new air into the complex variations of his chords; he would “vamp”

up and down, up and down, while the singer cleared his throat, smiled

on the audience, and arranged his tie. Then pianist and singer, as

much together as if they had been practising for two nights, would go

together through a harmonious recital of how:

“_The Rattling Seaman’s jolly as a friar,

As jolly as a friar is he, he, he._”

After the song, and the encore that was sure to follow, were done,

uncle always had to share the singer’s triumph in the shape of noggins

of punch, and mugs of porter, into which a red hot poker from the coals

had been stirred, and seasoned with pepper and salt. This would be

repeated so many times in an evening that uncle soon became unfit for

either piano or flute-playing, and I generally had to go for the flute

the next morning before I went to school.

Uncle Stanwood had a golden age to which he often referred. In the

first place, as a young bachelor he had traveled like a gentleman. His

tour had included Ireland, France, and the Isle of Man. This was before

he had learned to play a flute and piano and when public-houses were

religiously abhorred. He was always repeating an experience that befell

him in Ireland. I can record it verbatim. “I was walking along through

a little hamlet when night came on. I saw one of them sod houses, and

I knocked on the door. A blinking Irish woman asked me what I wanted.

I told her, ‘a night’s lodging.’ She pointed to a far corner in the

sod house where a pig and some hens lay, and said to me, ‘Ye can dossy

down in the corner wid th’ rist of the fam’ly!’” In its time there was

no more vivid story that caught my imagination than that--pig, hens,

and blinking Irish woman. About his Isle of Man experiences, uncle

was always eloquent. Besides all else he had a ditty about it, to the

accompaniment of which he often dandled me on his knee.

“_Aye, oh, aye! Lissen till I tell you

Who I am, am, am.

I’m a rovin’ little darkey

All the way from Isle of Man.

I’m as free as anybody,

And they call me little Sam!_”

Previous to his marriage, also, he had been the teacher of a very large

young men’s class in one of the churches. That was his proudest boast,

because, as explained to me over and over again in after years, “It was

that work as a teacher that made me read a lot of mighty fine books. I

had to prepare myself thoroughly, for those young fellows were reading

philosophy, religion, and the finest fiction. I had to keep ahead of

them in some way. It is to that work that I owe what little learnin’

I’ve got.”

The inclinations toward the finer, sweeter things of life were wrapped

up in uncle’s character, but his will was not strong enough to keep him

away from the public-house.

“That’s my downfall,” he said. “Oh, if I’d not learned to play the

flute and the piano!” His art was his undoing; but never did his

undoing smother his golden age. When almost incoherently drunk it was

his habit to whimper, “I was better once--I was. I taught a young men’s

class. Look at me now!”

It always seemed to me that Aunt Millie was overstocked with the things

that uncle lacked--will-power, assertiveness, and electric temper. She

was positively positive in every part of her nature. She was positive

that “Rule Britannia” should come next after “Nearer, my God, to Thee!”

She was likewise positive as to the validity of her own ideas. Her

mind, once made up--it did not take very long for that--was inflexible.

The English landed nobility never had a more worshipful worshiper

than my aunt. She was positive that it was one of our chief duties

to “know our place,” and “not try to be gentlemen and ladies when we

don’t have the right to be such.” “It’s no use passing yourself off as

middle-classers if you arn’t middle-classers and why should, on the

other hand, a middle-classer try to pose as a gentleman?”

She was always reciting to me, as one of the pleasant memories she had

carried off from her girlhood, how, when the carriage of a squire had

swept by, she had courtesied graciously and humbly.

“Did they bow to you, Aunt?” I asked.

“Bow to me!” she exclaimed, contemptuously, “who ever heard the

likes!” Once she had seen a _real_ lord! Her father had been one of

those hamlet geniuses whose dreams and plans never get much broader

recognition than his own fireside. He had built church organs, played

on them, and had composed music. He had also made the family blacking,

soap, ink, and many other useful necessities. He had also manufactured

the pills with which the family cured its ills, pills of the

old-fashioned sort of soap, sugar, and herb, compounded. Once he had

composed some music for his church’s share in a national fête, on the

merit of which, my aunt used to fondly tell me, _real_ gentlemen would

drive up to the door merely to have a glimpse at the old gentleman,

much as if he had been Mendelssohn in retirement.

Aunt sent me daily to one or other of the public-houses for either

a jug of ale or a pint of porter. Sometimes she took more than a

perfunctory jug, and then she was on edge for a row instantly.

When intoxicated she fairly quivered with jealousy, suspicion, and

violent passion. One question touching on a delicate matter, one word

injudiciously placed, one look of the eye, and she became a volcano of

belligerent rage, belching profanity, and letting crockery or pieces of

coal express what even her overloaded adjectives could not adequately

convey. And when the storm had spent itself, she always relapsed into

an excessive hysteria, which included thrillingly mad shrieks, which my

poor, inoffensive uncle tried to drown in showers of cold water.

“I’ve brought it all on myself,” explained Uncle Stanwood, in

explanation of his wife’s intoxication. He then went on to explain

how, when he had been courting, he had taken his fiancée on a holiday

trip to the seaside. While there, in a beer-garden, he had pressed

her to drink a small glass of brandy. “It all started from that,” he

concluded. “God help me!”

He certainly had to pay excessive interest on that investment, for if

ever a mild man was nagged, or if ever a patient man had his temper

tried, it was Uncle Stanwood. By my tenth birthday the house walls were

no longer echoing with peace, for there were daily tirades of wrath and

anger about the table.

These family rows took many curious turns. In them my aunt, well read

in Dickens, whose writings were very real and vivid to her, freely

drew from that fiction master’s gallery of types, and fitted them to

uncle’s character. “Don’t sit there a-rubbin’ your slimy hands like

Uriah Heep!” she would exclaim; or, “Yes, there you go, always and

ever a-sayin’ that something’s bound to turn up, you old Micawber,

you!” But this literary tailoring was not at all one-sided, for uncle

was even better read than his wife, and with great effect he could

say, “Yes, there you go, always insinuatin’ everlastingly, like Becky

Sharp,” and the drive was superlatively effective in that uncle well

knew that Thackeray’s book was aunt’s favorite. I heard him one day

compare his wife to Mrs. Gamp, loving her nip of ale overmuch, and

on another occasion she was actually included among Mrs. Jarley’s

wax-works!

There was a curious streak of benevolence in my aunt’s nature, a

benevolence that concerned itself more with strangers than with those

in her own home. I have seen her take broths and meats to neighbors,

when uncle and I have had too much buttered bread and preserves. I have

seen her take her apron with her to a neighbor’s, where she washed the

dishes, while her own had to accumulate, to be later disposed of with

my assistance. There was a shiftless man in the town, the town-crier,

who would never take charity outright. Him did aunt persuade to come

and paint rural scenes, highly colored with glaring tints, as if nature

had turned color-blind. There were cows in every scene, and aunt

noticed that all the cows were up to their knees in water. Not one

stood clear on the vivid green hills.

“Torvey,” she remarked to the old man, “why do you always put the cows

in water?” The old artist responded, “It’s this way, Mrs. Brindin, you

see, ma’am, I never learnt to paint ’oofs!” As a further benevolence

towards this same man, she kept on hand a worn-out clock, for him to

earn a penny on. After each tinkering the clock was never known to

run more than a few minutes after the old man had left. But aunt only

laughed over it, and called Torvey “summat of a codger, to be sure!”

I attended a low brick schoolhouse which in spring and summer time was

buried in a mass of shade, with only the tile chimneys free from a

coat of ivy. The headmaster gave us brief holidays, when he had us run

races for nuts. In addition to the usual studies I was taught darning,

crocheting, plain sewing, and knitting. Every Monday morning I had to

take my penny for tuition.

Outside of school hours there were merry times, scraping sparks on the

stone flags with the irons of our clogs, going to the butcher’s every

Tuesday morning, at the slaughter-house, where he gave us bladders to

blow up and play football with; and every now and then he would ask us

to lay hold of the rope and help in felling a bull across the block.

The only apple I ever saw growing in England hung over a brick wall in

a nest of leaves--a red crab no bigger than a nutmeg. I used to visit

that wall with my companions, but not to try for that apple--it was too

sacred in our eyes for that--but to admire it, as it bent up and down

in the wind, and to wonder how many more were inside the wall among the

larger branches. On Saturdays, after I had brightened the stone hearth

with blue-stone and sand, I went out to greet the Scotch bag-piper who,

with his wheezy pibroch, puffed out like a roasted Christmas goose,

perambulated down our road so sedately that the feather in his plaid

bonnet never quivered. As this did not take up all the morning, we

borrowed bread-knives from our families, and went to the fields, where

we dug under the sod, amongst the fresh, damp soil, for groundnuts,

while the soaring lark dropped its sweet note down on us.

But the gala days were the holidays, filled as only the English know

how to fill them with high romance and pure fun. There were the

Sunday-school “treats,” when we went to the fields in holiday clothes

and ran, leaped, and frolicked for prize cricket balls and bats, and

had for refreshment currant buns and steaming coffee. There was the

week at the seashore, when aunt and uncle treated me to a rake, shovel,

and colored tin pail, for my use on the shore in digging cockles,

making sand mountains, and in erecting pebble breastworks to keep

back the tide. To cap all else as a gala opportunity, full of color,

noise, music, and confusion, came Glossop Fair, to which I went in

a special train for children. There I dodged between the legs of a

bow-legged, puffy old man to keep up with the conductor of our party,

and I spent several pennies on shallow glasses filled with pink ices,

which I licked with such assiduity that my tongue froze at the third

consecutive glass. I was always given pennies enough to be able to

stop at the stalls to buy a sheep’s trotter, with vinegar on it; to

eat a fried fish, to get a bag of chipped potatoes, delicious sticks

of gold, covered with nice-tasting grease, and to buy a Pan’s pipe, a

set of eight-reed whistles on which, though I purchased several sets,

I was never able to attain to the dignity and the thrill of so simple

a tune as “God Save the Queen.” The grand climax of the fair, the very

_raison d’être_, were the fairy shows, held under dirty canvases, with

red-nosed barkers snapping worn whips on lurid canvases whereon were

pictured: “Dick Whittington and His Cat,” at the famous milestone, with

a very impressionistic London town in the haze, but inevitable for

Dick and His Cat; or “Jack and the Beanstalk,” showing a golden-haired

prince in blue tights and a cloud of a giant reaching out a huge paw to

get the innocent youth and cram him down his cavernous maw.

“’Ere you are, Ladies and Gents!” screamed the barker, pattering

nervously and significantly on these pictures, “Only ’riginal ‘Dick

Whittington and His Cat,’ Lord Mayor o’ Lunnon! Grown ups a penny,

childer ’arf price! Step up all! The band will play! ’Ere you are, now!

Tickets over there!”

My tenth birthday marked the end of my boyish, merry play-life. Over

its threshold I was to meet with and grasp the calloused hand of Labor.

Not the labor which keeps a healthy lad from mischief or loafing, not

the labor of mere thrift, but the more forbidding form of it; the labor

from which strong men cringe in dread, the labor from which men often

seek escape by self-inflicted death, the labor of sweat, of tears, of

pitiless autocracy--the labor of Necessity! And necessity, which is not

induced by reasonable and excusable circumstances, nor is the result

of a mere mistaken judgment of events, such as comes through unskilled

business acumen or an overconfidence in a friend’s advice, but the

necessity which is rooted in carelessness, squandering, drunkenness.

For in that tenth year of my life, what had appeared to be the strong

walls of my uncle’s house collapsed utterly. The undermining had been

unseen, unthought of. In that year the parlors of the “Linnet’s Nest”

and “The Blue Sign” saw more of my uncle than they had previously.

His piano-playing and his flute solos formed an almost continuous

performance from early afternoon until late at night. When he started

out to peddle his fish, he would stop Bob in front of the “Linnet’s

Nest” and forget his customers until I went and reminded him. The

public-house tills began to draw the money that came to uncle’s from

his peddling, his shop, and the interest from his bank account. But

the money loss was trivial in comparison with the loss of what little

business initiative or inclination he had possessed. He soon became

unfit to order fish from Manchester. His former customers could not

depend upon him. Uncle Stanwood had become a confirmed drunkard.

Previous to this, in spite of the incompatibility of temper between

uncle and aunt, there had always been a little breath of peace around

our fender, but now it fled, and the house was filled with nervous

bickerings, hiccoughs, and piggish snortings. The temple of man that

had been so imperfectly built was henceforth profaned. The fluent words

passed, and an incoherent gurgle took their place. The intelligent

gleam grew dim in those sad grey eyes. The firm strides which had

indicated not a little pride became senile, tottering, childish. There

was written over the lintels of our door: “Lost, A Man.”

All this was not one thousandth part so serious to the creditors who

clamored for their pay as it was to aunt and me. To see that slouching,

dull-eyed, slavering creature cross the kitchen threshold and tumble

in a limp heap on the sanded floor was a sword-thrust that started

deep, unhealing wounds. The man and boy changed places, suddenly. That

strange, huddled, groping creature, helpless on the couch, his muddy

shoes daubing the clothes, was not the uncle I had known. I seemed to

have no uncle. I had lost him, indeed, and now had to take his place as

best I could. Aunt tried her best, with my help, to keep the business

going, but the task was beyond us, as we plainly saw.

But uncle fought battles in his effort to master himself. He strained

his will to its utmost; postulated morning after morning intentions

of “bracing up”; took roundabout routes with his cart to avoid the

public-houses, left his purse at home, sent aunt to Manchester to buy

the fish so that he would not have that temptation, took me with him to

remind him of his promises, even sent word to the “Blue Sign” and the

“Linnet’s Nest” to give him no more credit, and signed the pledge; but

the compelling thirst would not be tamed. To take a roundabout route

in the morning only meant that he would tie up his horse at the “Blue

Sign” lamp-post on his way back; to send aunt to Manchester only meant

that, with her out of the way, he had a clear road to the “Linnet’s

Nest.” When I went with him, as a moral mentor, he bribed me with a

penny to get me out of the way. Sometimes he left me waiting for him

until I grew so miserable that I drove home alone. As uncle was a good

customer, the public-houses only smiled when he sent word to them not

to give him credit; they were not in the business of sobering customers.

So it was a losing fight all the way. Uncle was a coward in full

retreat. He blamed nobody but himself; in _that_ he was not a coward.

In his sober moments there was a new and discouraging note in his

voice. He echoed the language of those who fail. He met me with an

ashamed face. He looked furtively at me, just as a guilty man would

look on one he had deeply wronged. His shoulders stooped, as do the

shoulders of a man who for the first time carries a heavy burden of

shame.

Aunt Millie, in attempting to mend matters, unfortunately used the

wrong method. She antagonized her husband, sometimes beyond mortal

patience. She generally waited until my uncle was sober, and then let

loose vituperative storms that fell with crashing force on his spirit.

She was mistress of the vocabulary of invective; the stinging word,

the humiliating, the maddening word was instant on her lips. She did

not have her word once and for all. If she had, it would probably have

saved matters; but she kept up a steady stream of abuse throughout the

time uncle was in the house. Often he was planning for a night of home

when his wife would unload the full burden of her ire on him; and if

only for quietness, he would leave the house altogether and find solace

in the noggins and mugs.

As an onlooker, and though a mere lad, I saw that my aunt was taking

the wrong course, and every now and then, like a Greek chorus at the

tragedy, I would remonstrate with her, “Why don’t you let him alone

when he wants to stay at home? You’ve driven him off when he was not

going out, aunt!”

“You clown!” she would storm, “mind your place and manners before I

turn on you and give you a taste of the strap!”

After that it became my custom, whenever uncle was getting a

tongue-lashing, to say to him, in a whisper, “Don’t mind her, uncle.

Don’t leave the house. She doesn’t know what she’s saying!” In

secret, uncle would say to me, “It’s more than flesh and blood can

stand, Al, this constant nagging. I’d not be half so much away in the

public-houses if she’d let me have a peaceful time at home.”

Indeed, my uncle, intoxicated was five times more agreeable than was

his wife when angered. She herself was drinking mildly, and every sup

of ale fired her temper until it burned at white heat. All the bulldog

of the British roared and yelped in her then. If contradicted by my

uncle or me, she threw the first thing to hand, saucer, knife, or

loaf. So fearful was I that murder would ensue, that several times I

whispered to my uncle to go off to the “Linnet’s Nest” in the interests

of peace.

Like the reports of the messengers bringing to Job the full measure of

his loss, came market letters from Manchester, unpaid bills from the

town merchants, and personal repudiations by my uncle’s old customers.

We had to solicit credit from the shop-keepers. Failure was on its way.

One spring day in that year Uncle Stanwood came into the house in great

excitement. He met my aunt’s inquiring remark with, “I’m going to ship

for the United States, Millie!”

“Ship your grandaddy!” she retorted. “Been drinking gin this time, eh?”

“I’m sober enough, thank God” replied uncle. “I’ve borrowed enough

money to carry me across. That’s the only way I shall ever straighten

out and get away from the public-houses. It’s best; don’t you think so,

old girl?”

“What about us?” asked my aunt with an angry gleam in her eyes. “What’s

to become of us?”

“Why,” stammered uncle, “you see I must go on ahead and get something

to do, first; then I can send for you, Millie. Think what it means for

us to get away to America, where are so many bright chances! God knows

but I shall be able to lift up my head there, and get a new start. I

can’t do anything so long as I stay here.”

So, after the first shock had passed, it was arranged. For the first

time in many days I saw my uncle put his arms around his wife’s

shoulders, as if he were courting her again, and re-dreaming youth’s

dream, as he painted with winsome colors this new adventure. When hope

was shining its brightest in his eye my aunt’s caught the gleam of it,

and in a much kinder voice than I was used to hearing, she said, “Do

it, Stanwood! Do it, and we’ll look after the business while you get

ready for us in the new world!”

In another week my uncle had packed his belongings in a tin trunk, had

said good-by to his old-time friends, had taken us with him to the

station to talk earnestly, manfully with us until the Liverpool train

came in. Then we went through the gates to the compartment, and saw him

shut in by the guard. Through the open window he whispered counsel and

tender words, and re-echoed his new purposes. Then there was a stir,

the train began to move away from us, and my uncle was plunging off

towards a new world, and, we prayed, towards a new manhood, leaving

aunt and me dazed at our new loneliness.

_Chapter II. Dripping Potatoes, Diplomatic Charity, and Christmas

Carols_

_Chapter II. Dripping Potatoes, Diplomatic Charity, and Christmas

Carols._

Contrary to his promise, Uncle did not write to us announcing his

arrival. In fact, for some strange reason, no letter had arrived by

the end of summer. After the leaves had gone and the trees were left

stripped by the fall winds, no word had come to comfort us from America.

Aunt and I had tried to keep the shop open, but we saw every day that

we had not the skill to make it a success. Already, in the minds of

the townspeople, we had failed. It was not long before we were selling

nothing but the smoked and dried fish with which the shop was stocked.

We could get no fresh fish on credit. Even the grocer would not longer

trust us, and shut off supplies. We tried to make out as well as we

could, but not philosophically, on dry bread, smoked fish, and tea,

with monotonous regularity. Aunt Millie was the wrong kind of person

to live with in reduced circumstances. She took away the taste of a red

herring by her complaints and impatient tirades against the author of

our misfortune. The failure of letters, too, only increased her anger.

There was heated complaint for dessert at every meal. That Scriptural

word, “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is,” might have meant

much to me during those hungry days.

Then our collateral had to go, a piece at a time. Bob, the one-eyed

horse, friend of those early years, harnessed to his cart, brought in

some money with which we could buy a little fresh stock which I tried

to peddle in a hand-cart. But I could not get around very skilfully,

and as I trudged over the same route where previously my uncle had gone

with his humorous shout of “Mussels alive! Buy ’em alive!” people did

not trade with me, but pitied me, and stroked my head in sympathy. When

the stock was gone, and it was soon gone, my aunt thought that she had

better give up the fight and sell out at auction!

By this time winter was full on us. There were snow and dismal winds

which made lonely sounds down our chimney. Old Torvey, the town-crier,

was called in for a consultation, and the auction definitely planned.

The following Saturday, in the morning, while the housewives were

busy polishing their fenders, Old Torvey, clanging his hand-bell with

great unction, came up the middle of the road, stopping at strategic

points, and when the aproned housewives and their children stood

at their doors alert, he solemnly announced, in his sing-song way:

“To--be--sold--at--Public--Auction--this--day--at--two--in--the--

afternoon--all--the--stock--in--trade--of--Stanwood--Brindin--at--

his--shop--at--the--head--of--Station--Road--together--with--all--

the--movable--fixtures--therein--and--any--other--items--not--herein--

mentioned--Sale--to--begin--sharply--on--time--and--goods--to--go--to--

the--highest--bidder--Terms--cash--and--all--bids--welcomed--Come--one--

and--all--Two--in--the--afternoon. Now--get--back--to--your--cleaning--

before--your--chaps--get--whom!”--this last as a sally for the women,

“whom” meaning “home.”

All the afternoon, while the auction was in session, aunt and I sat

in the parlor of our house, behind the flower-pots, watching all who

went in. Aunt kept up a running commentary: “Yes, you go in, too,

Jane Harrup. You wouldn’t come near me to buy, would you? Um, that

blood-sucker, Thompson! What a crowd of vampires a sale can bring out!

I didn’t think that you were looking for bargains from us, Martin

Comfort. It’s beyond me how folks do gather when you are down!”

Then, when the last of the curious crowd had gone and the shop had

passed from our control, there came anxious shopmen demanding the

settlement of their bills. And when the last item had been paid there

was hardly a shilling left. We had merely succeeded in settling the

honor of our house.

The next week the town-crier once more

paraded the streets of the town, announcing:

“To--be--sold--at--public--auction--at--two--in--the--afternoon--

many--of--the--household--effects--of--Stanwood--Brindin--etc.”

This time our parlor was stripped of its piano, several ornamental

pieces of furniture, and various bric-à-brac. When the bidders had

carted away their “bargains,” my aunt said to me, “Here is one room

less to look after, Al. I suppose I ought to be thankful enough, but

I’m not!” After that, we lived entirely in the kitchen.

So, with only a few shillings from the proceeds of the last auction,

aunt and I faced the winter. We were buoyed up by the hope that Uncle

Stanwood would send us a letter despite his strange silence. But day by

day the coal grew less and less in the cellar, the wood was burned up,

and the larder needed replenishing.

There came to our ears whispers of gossip that were spreading through

the town: that uncle had parted from aunt and would never live with her

again, that our financial perplexities were really ten times worse than

people imagined, that we should eventually be forced into the workhouse!

Behind that door, which only opened every now and then in answer to a

friendly knock, a real battle with poverty was fought. Dry bread and

tea (the cups always with thick dregs of swollen, soaked leaves which

I used to press with a spoon to extract every possible drop of tea)

finally formed the burden of unnourishing meals. Even the tea failed at

last, and the bread we ate was very stale indeed. Yet I found dry bread

had a good taste when there was nothing else to eat.

It was in the middle of December that Aunt bethought herself of some

herring-boxes piled in the garret over the empty shop. She had me

split them into kindlings, tie them into penny bundles, and sent me

out to peddle them at the doors of our friends. Aunt made me wait

until darkness when I first went out with the kindling. She did not

want me to be seen in the daylight carrying the wood. That day we had

eaten but a breakfast of oat-cake and water, and I was very hungry and

impatient to sell some wood that I might have something more to eat.

But aunt was firm, so that it was six o’clock and very dark when I

took two penny bundles. The cotton mills had all their lights out. The

street-lamps were little dismal spots in the silent streets. Warm glows

of light came from front windows, and the shadows of housewives serving

supper were seen on many window blinds. My own hunger redoubled. I

hurried to the first house on a side street, gave a timid knock, and

waited for an answer. A big, rosy-cheeked woman opened the door, and

peered down on me, saying, “Where art’?”

“Please, ma’am, if you please,” I replied, “I’m Al Priddy, and me and

Aunt haven’t got anything to eat for tea, and I’m selling bundles of

dry wood for a penny apiece.”

“Bless ’is little ’eart,” exclaimed the big woman. “Bless th’ little

’eart! ’is belly’s empty, that it is. Come reight in, little Priddy

lad, there’s waarm teigh (tea) and ’ot buttered crumpets. Sarah Jane,”

she shouted towards the rear of the house from whence came the tinkle

of spoons rattling in cups and a low hum of voices, “get that tu’pence

from under th’ china shep’erdess on’t mantle and bring it reight off.

Come in, Priddy, lad, and fill th’ belly!”

“If you please, ma’am,” I said, “I can’t stop, if you please. Aunt

Millie hasn’t got anything to eat and she’s waiting me. I think I’ll

take the money, if you please, and be sharp home, thank you!”

“Bless ’is little ’eart,” murmured the big woman, “’ere’s tuppence

’apenny, an’ come ageen, wen tha has’t moor wood to sell.”

“If you please,” I interposed, “it’s only tu’pence. I can’t take more;

aunt said so!”

“Bless ’is ’eart, that’s so,” said the big woman. “Is th’ sure th’

won’t eat a waarm crumpet, little Priddy, lad?”

I had to refuse again, and clutching the two pennies, I ran exultantly

down the road toward home, where aunt was sitting near the very tiny

light that a very tiny piece of coal was giving in the big fireplace.

With one penny I purchased a warm loaf and with the other I bought some

golden treacle, and that night there was not a lord in England whose

supper had the taste to it that mine had.

Two days after that, when we were once more without food in the house,

and when I had had but a scant breakfast, I met a rough-garbed boy not

much older than myself, a homeless waif, known and condemned by the

name of “Work ’Ouse Teddy.” This day that I met him, he performed his

usual feat of wriggling his fingers on his nose, a horrible, silent,

swear gesture, and called out to me, “Hey, Fishy, got a cockle on your

nose?”

“No,” I replied, being secretly afraid of him, “I’ve not. I’m hungry. I

haven’t had any dinner.”

“Aw, yer got chunks of money, you have, I knows. Don’t taffy me like

that or I’ll squeege yer nose in my thumbs, blast me, I will!” and he

made a horrible contortion of his face to frighten me.

“I am hungry!” I protested. “We are poor now, Teddy.”

Then I told him all our story, as well as I could, and when I told him

about selling the kindling, he laughed and said, “Blow me, you codger!

You oughter get your meals like I gets um. Say, now, blokey, wot you

say to--well, let’s see,” and he mused awhile.

Then, “Well, say, wot would yer say to ’taters in gravy, some meat-pie,

cold, and a drink of coffee?”

“Oh,” I gasped, “that would be rich.” Then Teddy winked, a broad,

meaningful wink. “I’m yer Daddy, then,” and after that, “make a cross

over yer ’eart, and say, ‘Kill me, skin me, Lord Almighty, if I tell!’”

and when I had so sworn, he explained, “Now yer won’t let on where I

keep things, so come on, blokey, I’m yer Daddy!” and he laughed as

merrily as if he did not have to sleep out like a lost sheep of society

or to dodge the police, who were ever on his tracks trying to get him

put back into the workhouse.

Teddy led me through the open gates of the mill-yard when darkness

had come on. The firemen, in the glow of their furnaces, called out,

cheerily, “Blast th’ eyes, Teddy, don’t let the boss catch thee!” and,

“Got a chew of thick twist (tobacco) for me, Ted, lad?” After he had

given the man a chew, and had boxed a round with the other stoker,

Teddy came to where I stood, and said, “They let me sleep here nights.

They’re good blokes. Now, here’s where I keeps things.” So saying, he

led me to a corner of the immense coal heap, and there, in a box amidst

thick heaps of coal powder, he drew out a pitcher with the lip gone and

only a useless fragment of the handle left. He also drew out a sort

of pie plate and a small fruit basket. “I keeps ’em there to keep the

dust off,” he explained, and handed me the basket. “Now we get ready to

eat dripping potatoes and meat-pie, bloke.” Then he took me near the

furnaces, behind a heap of coal, so that the boss watchman would not

find us, and elaborately explained to me the procedure to be followed

in getting so tasty a supper.

“When the mill lets out at six, me an’ you’ll stand there at the gates,

you standin’ on one side and me on t’ther. You don’ be shy, bloke, but

speak up, and say, ‘Any leavin’s, good folks!’ ‘Give us yer leavin’s!’

Some on um’ll grumble at you, an’ some’ll say, ‘Get off, you bloke,

we’ll tell the Bobby,’ but they won’t. You’ll find some that’ll open

their boxes and turn ’em inside out for you right in the basket. Then

you just come over to my side, and I’ll show you. Just remember that

it’s dripping ’taters an’ meat-pie an’ ’ot coffee! Don’t that make yer

mouth water, bloke?”

I said that it would be a regular feast.

At six o’clock, when the clang of a big bell in the mill tower let

itself out in a riot of din, the Whole inside of the factory seemed to

run down with a deepening hum, then the quiet precincts of the yards

became filled with a chattering, black army. Teddy and I stood on our

respective sides of the big gateway, and waited for the exodus. I grew

suddenly afraid that I should be trampled under foot, afraid that my

voice would not be heard, afraid that I should be jailed. So I let most

of the crowd past unsolicited, and then I grew afraid that Teddy would

perform all manner of horrible and grewsome tortures on me if I did not

try, so I darted my basket almost into the stomach of a tall man, and

piped, “Got any leavings, sir?” He paused, looked me over, took the

dirty pipe from his mouth as he further extended his contemplation, and

said, “Sartinly, lad,” and deposited in my basket a currant bun and a

slice of cold meat, and went on muttering, “It might be my own, God

knows!”

The gas lights were out in the mill, and the huge bulk was merely

part of the silent night, when I went across and showed Teddy what

I had obtained. He laughed, “Not at all bad--for a learner, that!”

he commented. “It takes practice to get dripping ’tato and meat-pie,

bloke. I got it and a jug o’ coffee. We’ll eat near the bilers,” and he

led the way into the yard, making me dodge behind a pile of boxes as

the night watchman came to lock the gates. The firemen allowed Teddy

to warm the coffee and the food, and then we sat in the glow of the

opening doors, in a bed of coal dust, and ate as sumptuous a meal as

had passed my lips for some time.

When I expressed my thanks, Teddy said, “Be on deck to-morrer, too,

bloke. It’ll be fish then. Would you like fish?”

“I do like fish,” I agreed. “I will come to-morrow, Teddy, thank you

kindly.”

“I’ll go to the gate with yer an’ give yer a leg o’er. The gate’s

locked, bloke.” After many slips, Teddy at last had me over, and as he

said good-night through the pickets, I said, “Will you sleep out in the

snow, to-night, Teddy?”

He laughed, “Oh, no, blokey, not me. Wot’s the matter with a snooze

near the bilers with a cobble o’ coal for a piller, eh?” Knowing that

he would be perhaps warmer than I, I left him, and ran home to tell my

aunt what a good supper I had picked up.

When I had finished the recital of the adventure, my aunt grew very

indignant and gave me a severe whipping with a solid leather strap.

“Shamin’ me up and down like that!” she cried. “Beggin’ at a mill gate!

I’ll show you!” and I had to swear not to have anything more to do with

Work’ouse Teddy.

But evidently through that experience, and on account of my having sold

the kindling wood, our friends were at last apprised of the actual

poverty in our house, and for a while there seemed to be no end to the

little offerings of food that were brought in. I shall always remember

with pride the diplomacy with which most of the food was given. When

Mrs. Harrup brought in a steaming pigeon-pie, wrapped in a spotless

napkin, she said, “Mrs. Brindin, I had more meat than I knew what to do

with and some pie-crust left to waste, so I says to our Elizabeth Ann,

‘Lizzie Ann, make up a little pie for Mrs. Brindin, to let her see how

well you’re doing with crust. She knows good crust when she _tastes_

it, and I want you to let her pass judgment on it, Lizzie Ann.’ I said,

likewise, ‘Lizzie Ann, if thy pie-crust doesna’ suit Mrs. Brindin, then

thy ’usband’ll never be suited.’ So here’s it, Mrs. Brindin. Never

mind washing the dish, please.”

Mrs. Harrow, the iron monger’s demure wife, herself a bride of but

two months, came in one morning, dangling a long, lank hare. She had

a doubtful expression on her face, and, as soon as she had crossed

the threshold of our kitchen, she made haste to fling the hare on our

table, exclaiming, “There, Mrs. Brindin. There it is for you to tell

us on’t. I bought it yestere’en down’t lower road and it come this

morning, early. I was going to stew it, but then I smelled it. It’s not

a bit nice smell, is’t? I couldn’t bring myself to put it in the stew.

I made a pudding and dumpling dinner ’stead. Just you sniff at it,

Mrs. Brindin. You know about ’em, bein’ as you sold ’em, mony on ’em.

It don’t smell tidy, do it?” She looked anxiously at aunt. “Why, Mrs.

Harrow,” said my aunt, “’Ares always are that way. It all goes off in

the cooking. It’s nothing to bother over.”

“Uh,” said the iron monger’s wife, “come off or not, I could never eat

it. I never could. I wonder, Mrs. Brindin, if you will let Al, there,

throw it away or do something with it. I will never have such a thing

in my house!” and she hurried out of the kitchen.

“Al,” smiled aunt, a rare smile, “here’s stew and pie for near a week.”

Our neighbors could not always be doing such diplomatic acts, and after

a while we had to go back to treacle and bread, hourly expecting word

from America. We had faith that Uncle Stanwood would let us hear from

him, though his long, disheartening silence worried us considerably.

Aunt did not go to work, because she hoped at any day to hear the call,

“Come to America.” Then in desperation Aunt had her name put on the

pauper’s list for a shilling a week. I had to go to the parish house on

Monday mornings, and stand in line with veteran paupers--“Barley-corn

Jack,” the epileptic octogenarian, Widow Stanbridge, whose mother and

grandparents before her had stood in this Monday line, Nat Harewell,

the Crimean hero, who had a shot wound in his back, and many other

minor characters who came for the shilling. The first Monday I stood

in’t, I chanced to step in front of “Barley-corn” Jack, who, unknown to

me at the time, was usually given the place of honor at the head of the

line. He clutched me by the nape of the neck, whirled me around, lifted

up my upper lip with a dirty finger, and grinned, “Got a row of ’em,

likely ’nough! Screw th’ face, young un, screw it tight, wil’t?”

I was so terror stricken, and tried to escape his clutch with such

desperation, that Nat Harewell interjected, “Lend ’im hup, Jack, lend

’im hup, owld un!” and Jack did let me go with a whirl like a top

until I was dazed. I fell in line near the Widow, who laughed at me,

showing her black teeth; and then, while she twisted an edge of her

highly flavored and discolored shawl, and chewed on it, she asked,

“Was’t ale ur porter ’at browt thee wi’ uns, laddie?”

I replied that I was Al Priddy and that _I_ was “respectable.” With

that, the line began to move past the clerk’s window, and there was no

more talking.

In such circumstances we reached the Christmas season, and still we had

no word from America. It was the night before Christmas, and a night

before Christmas in an English town is astir with romance, joy, and

poetic feeling. The linen draper had a white clay church in his window,

with colored glass windows behind which burned a candle. The butcher

had his pink pig in his window with a hat on its head, a Christmas grin

on its face, and a fringe of pigs’ tails curled into spirals hanging

in rows above him. There were tinsel laden trees with golden oranges

peeping out from behind the candy stockings, wonderlands of toys, and

The Home of Santy, where he was seen busy making toys for the world. I

had gone down the row with my aunt, looking at all that, for aunt had

said, “Al, there’s to be a sorry Christmas for you this time. You had

better get all you can of it from the shop windows.” We were pushed

this way and that by the crowds that went by doing their shopping.

Once we had been with them in the Christmas spirit, now we dwelt apart

because of our poverty.

“My,” commented aunt, with the old bitterness in her tone, “the fools!

Parading afore us to let us see that _they_ can have a good time of it!”

Our dark home had a more miserable aspect about it than ever when we

got back. “Get right up to bed,” commanded aunt, “there’s no coal to

waste. You can keep warm there!” and though her manner of saying it was

rough, yet I heard a catch in her voice, and then she burst into tears.

“Never mind, Aunt Millie,” I comforted, “uncle will write, I feel

sure!” She looked up, startled, and seemed ashamed that I had found her

crying and had struck her thought so.

“Who’s whimpering?” she cried fiercely. “Mind your business!” But I

noticed that when she came in my room that night and thought me asleep,

when in reality I was keeping my ears open for the carols, she kissed

me very tenderly and crept away silently.

When the carols first strike a sleeping ear, one imagines that the

far-away choirs of Heaven are tuning up for the next day’s chorus

before God. The first notes set such dreams a-spinning as are full of

angels and ethereal thoughts. Then the ear becomes aware of time and

place, and seizes upon the human note that may be found in Christmas

carols when they are sung by mill people at midnight in winter weather.

Then the ear begins to distinguish between this voice and that, and to

follow the bass that tumbles up and down through the air. Then there

is a great crescendo when the singers are right under one’s window,

and the words float into the chamber, each one winged with homely,

human tenderness and love. So I was awakened by the carol singers that

Christmas night. The first tune sung for us was, “Christians Awake,”

and when its three verses had awakened us, and we had gone to the

window to look down on the group, “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” was

followed by a soaring adaptation of Coronation. It was a group of about

fifteen. There were Old Bill Scroggs with his concertina, Harry Mills

with his ’cello, and Erwind Nichols with his flute. Torvey was there,

though he could not sing. He carried the lantern, caught the money

that was dropped into his hat from the windows, and kept the young men

and women from too much chattering as they approached the different

stands. When they had finished their anthems, aunt called from the

window, “Happy Christmas good folks. It was kind of you to remember us

so. It’s real good.” Old Torvey answered back, “Merry Christmas, Mrs.

Brindin. We must get along.” Then the crowd sent up a confused “Merry

Christmas,” and passed on.

Then it was back to bed again to sleep until awakened by an unnatural

pounding on our door below. “What is it, aunt?” I cried. “I don’t

know,” she answered. “Put on your clothes and get down before they

break in the door!” I dressed hurriedly, inserted the massive iron key

in the lock, gave it a turn only to have the door thrust open wide by

Old Torvey, who cried excitedly, as he waved a letter in the air, “It’s

from Hammerica, from him!”

My aunt ran down at that, partly dressed, and screamed in her

excitement. With fluttering, nervous fingers she tore open the

envelope, and examined the contents in a breathless minute.

“Stanwood sent it,” she laughed, “there’s tickets for America and a

money order for five pounds!” and then she gave in to a hysterical

relapse which required the calling in of the green-grocer’s wife. It

_was_ a Merry Christmas!

_Chapter III. My Schoolmates Teach me American_

_Chapter III. My Schoolmates Teach me American_

It was an extraordinary excuse that Uncle Stanwood gave for his neglect

of us. He disposed of the matter by saying, in his Christmas letter, “I

was so busy and so hard put to that I had no heart to write till I had

gathered enough money to send for you. I know it must have worried you.”

His steamship tickets, however, had suddenly put us in the limelight

in the town. “The Brindins are going over!” was the word that passed

around. I can imagine no more perfect fame than the United States had

gained in the minds of the men and women of our little town. America

was conceived as the center of human desire, the pivot of worldly

wealth, the mirror of a blissful paradise. If we had fallen heirs to

peerages or had been called to Victoria’s court, it is doubtful if more

out-and-out respect would have been showered on us than was ours when

it was known that we were going to the “States.”

The impression prevailed that in America the shabbiest pauper gets a

coat of gold. During the packing, when the neighbors dropped in while

Mrs. Girion made a hot brew of porter and passed it around to the

visitors and the workers, an America was constructed for us rivaling

the most extravagant fairy-tale ever told by Grimm.

“Yis,” chattered Old Scroggs, “they’s wunnerful likely things over

theer in Hammerica, I’m told. I heer’s ’at they spends all ther coppers

for toffy and such like morsels, havin’ goold a plenty--real goold!

Loads o’ it, they saay!”

“That’s so,” put in Maggie, our next-door neighbor. “Everybody has a

chance, too. Double wages for very little work. All sorts of apples and

good things to eat. Fine roads, too, and everybody on cycles; they’re

so cheap out there. They say the sun is always out, too, and not much

rain!”

In somebody’s memory there lingered traditions brought from America

by a visitor from that country. Besides these traditions, which had

to do with “gold,” “paradise,” and “easy work,” there were a half a

dozen Yankee words which we dearly loved to prate, as if by so doing

we had at least a little fellowship with the wonderful country. In the

school-yard my fellows drilled me on these words, Billy Hurd saying,

“Now, Al, them Yankees allus talk through the nose, like this,” and he

illustrated by a tinpanish, nasal tone that resembled the twang of a

tight piano wire. “Now, if you’re going to be American, talk like that,

it’s real Yankee. Now let’s see you try the word, ‘Candy,’ which is

what they call toffy over there. Only don’t forget to talk through the

nose like I did.”

So I dug my hands deep in my pockets, “cocked my jib,” as we called

looking pert, and drawled out in most exaggerated form, “Saay, Ha’nt,

want tew buy teow cents wuth of kaandy?”

“That’s just like Yankee,” complimented Billy. So I went home, called

my aunt’s attention to what I was going to do, and repeated the

sentence, much to her delight.

“That’s right, Al,” she said, “learn all the American you can, it will

help out when we get there!”

Filled with incidents like these, the days of our English lingering

rapidly drew to an end, and every thought in my mind had an ocean

steamship at the end of it. The neighbors made it a “time of tender

gloom,” for it could be nothing else to a mature person, this taking

up of the Brindin family history by the root for transplantation,

this breaking off of intimate relationships which, through blood,

reached back into misty centuries. Then, too, there was the element of

adventure, of risk, for we little knew what prospects were in store

for us in that strange land: what would be the measure of our reward

for going there. The neighbors were very solemn, but the strange thing

about it lay in the fact that there was not one, insular as the British

are heralded, who thought that the proposed trip should not be taken!

Finally we came to the farewells and I made mine very concrete. As it

was clearly understood that everybody who went to America attained

great wealth, I told Clara Chidwick that I would send her a fine gold

watch, and when her sister Eline cried with envy, I vowed to send

her a diamond brooch. Harry Lomick went off with the promise of five

new American dollars, Jimmy Hedding was consoled with the promise of

two cases of American “candy,” while Chaddy Ashworth vowed eternal

friendship when I promised him a barrel of American apples, and, on the

strength of that, as my dearest friend, we mutually promised to marry

sisters, to keep house next door to one another when we grew up, and to

share whatever good fortune might come to us in the shape of money!

Quite a body-guard of friends saw us off at the station. “Good luck to

you!” was the prevailing cry, as we sat in our compartment waiting for

the train to start for Liverpool. Then the guard shouted, “All aboard!”

and we were in the first, exciting stage of our great adventure.

[Illustration: WHEN THE TRAIN STARTED FOR LIVERPOOL, I COUNTED MY

PENNIES WHILE MY AUNT WEPT BITTERLY]

I settled myself back against the leather back of the seat wondering

why my aunt was crying so, and then I began to count the pennies with

which I planned to purchase some oranges in Liverpool.

Our night in Liverpool, our last night on English soil, is summed up

in a memory of a cheap hotel, a stuffy room, and a breakfast on an

uncountable number of hard-boiled eggs. In the morning, early, we

left that place and were taken on a tram-car to the dock. There I

did purchase some oranges from an old witch of an orange woman, big

football oranges, which when peeled were small enough, for they had

been boiled to thicken the peel, so Aunt said.

On the steerage deck we were jostled by Jews with their bedding and

food supplies. At ten o’clock, after we had stood in the vaccination

line, the ship sailed from the dock, and I leaned over the side

watching the fluttering handkerchiefs fade, as a snow flurry fades.

Then the tugs left us alone on the great, bottle-green deep. There was

a band in my heart playing, “I’m going to the land of the free and the

home of the brave!”

When one makes a blend of bilge-water, new paint, the odor of raw

onions, by confining them in an unventilated space under deck, and adds

to that blend the cries of ill-cared-for babies, the swearing of vulgar

women, and the complaining whine of sickly children, one knows what

the steerage on the old “Alaska” was to me. The Jews owned the warm,

windswept deck, where they sat all day on the tins which covered the

steam-pipes, and munched their raw fish, black bread, and flavored the

salt air with the doubtful odor of juicy onions. I heard the English

forswear the bearded tribe, denounce them for unbelievers, sniff at the

mention of the food they ate; but after all, the English had the wrong

end of the stick; they had to stay below deck most of the time, and

sicken themselves with the poor, unwholesome fare provided by the ship.

My aunt said to me, one day, “Al, I’d give the world for one of them

raw onions that the Jews eat. They’re Spanish onions, too, that makes

it all the more aggravating.”

“Why don’t you ask them for a piece of one?” I inquired innocently.

“What,” she sniffed, “ask a Jew? Never!” But when I begged one from a

Jew boy, she ate it eagerly enough.

The height of romance for me, however, was in the person of Joe, a real

stowaway. He was found on the second day out, and was given the task

of peeling the steerage potatoes, a task that kept him busy enough

throughout the day. My mouth went open to its full extent, when, after

helping him with his potatoes, he would reward me by paring off thick

slices of callouse from his palms. Joe said to me, “Never mind, lad, if

I work hard they’ll sure land me in Boston when we arrive. I’m going to

wark hard so they’ll like me. I do want to go to the States!”

In the women’s cabins, where I had my berth, they held evening concerts

of a very decided pathetic kind. Like minor tunes, they always ended

in a mournful wailing; for many of the women knew tragedies at first

hand, and were in the midst of tragedy, so that their songs and humors

were bound to be colored by despair. Carrie Bess, a stout woman whose

white neck was crumpled in folds like a washboard, had wit enough

to change the somberness of a morgue. She was usually the presiding

officer in charge of the concerts. She was on her way to rejoin her

husband, though she did not know where he was, but she said, “I’ll get

on the train and have it stop in Texas where Jek (Jack) is.” And with

this indefinite optimism she threw care to the winds and frolicked. She

would throw herself astride a chair, wink at us all, open her mouth

like a colored minstrel, and sing lustily,

“It’s very hard to see a girl

Sitting on a young man’s knee.

If I only had the man I love,

What a ’apy girl I’d be!”

Then, when the program had been gone through, with the oft-repeated

favorites, like Carrie Bess’ “It’s Very Hard,” the concert would always

close with an old sea song that somebody had introduced, a song which,

as I lay in my berth and sleepily heard it sung under those miserable

swinging lamps, amid the vitiated atmosphere of the cabin, and with the

sea sounds, wind, splash of waves, and hissing steam, summed up all the

miserable spirit of isolation on a great ocean:

“Jack was the best in the band,

Wrecked while in sight of the land,

If he ever comes back, my sailor boy, Jack,

I’ll give him a welcome home!”

When the numbered sails of pilots hove in sight, and the lightships,

guarding hidden shoals with their beacon masts, were passed, the

steerage began to get ready for its entrance in the land of dreams. The

song went up, every throat joining in:

“Oh, we’re going to the land where they pave the streets with money,

la, di, da, la, di, da!”

Finally we sighted a golden band in the distance, a true promise of

what we expected America to be. It was Nantasket Beach. That made us

put on our Sunday clothes, tie up our goods, and assemble at the rail

to catch a further glimpse of the great paradise. An American woman

gave me a cent, the first bit of American money my fingers ever touched.

Then the black sheds, the harbor craft, and the white handkerchiefs

came into view. I strained an eager, flushing face in an effort to

place Uncle Stanwood, but I could not find him.

Nearly all the passengers had left in company with friends, but my

aunt and I had to stay on board in instant fear of having to return

to England, for uncle was not there to meet us. I saw poor Joe, the

stowaway, in chains, waiting to be examined by the authorities for his

“crime.” I felt fully as miserable as he, when I whispered to him,

“poor Joe!”

After many hours uncle did arrive, and we had permission to land in

America. I confess that I looked eagerly for the gold-paved streets,

but the Assay Office could not have extracted the merest pin-head from

the muddy back street we rode through in a jolting team of some sort. I

saw a black-faced man, and cried for fear. I had a view of a Chinaman,

with a pigtail, and I drew back from him until uncle said, “You’ll see

lots of them here, Al, so get used to it.” When I sat in the station,

waiting for the train, I spent my first American money in America. I

purchased a delectable, somewhat black, banana!

_Chapter IV. I pick up a handful of America, make an American cap, whip

a Yankee, and march home whistling “Yankee Doodle”_

_Chapter IV. I pick up a handful of America, make an American cap, whip

a Yankee, and march home whistling, “Yankee Doodle”_

The full revealing of the America of my dreams did not come until the

following morning. Docks, back streets, stations, and the smoky, dusty

interiors of cars, were all I had seen the previous night. When we had

arrived in New Bedford, I heard the noise of a great city, but I had

been so stupid with excitement and weariness that no heed had been paid

to passing scenes. I had gone to bed in a semi-conscious state in the

boarding-house where Uncle Stanwood made his home. But in the morning,

after I realized that I was in America, that it was an American bed

on which I slept, that the wall-paper was American, and that the

window-blind, much crumpled and cracked, over the window, was the great

drop-curtain which, drawn to its full height, would show me a stage,

set with a glitter of things wondrous to the sight, I exclaimed aloud,

“Chaddy, oh, Chaddy, I’m in America!”

Just as one hesitates with esthetic dreaming over a jewel hidden in

a leaden casket, getting as much joy from anticipation as possible,

so I speculated in that dingy room before I pulled up the curtain.

What should I see? Trees with trunks of chrysolites, with all the

jewels of Aladdin’s cave dripping from their boughs, streets paved

with gold, people dressed like lords? All, all outside, with only that

crumpled blind between me and them? Thus, with an inflamed anticipation

and a magnified dream fancy, I hurried across the room, and let the

window-blind snap out of my nervous clutch clear to the top. I pressed

my eyes close to the glass, and there--Oh, the breaking-down of

dreams, the disillusionment of the deluded! There was a glaring sun

staring down on a duck-yard: a magnified duck-yard, bare of grass, of

shrubs, criss-crossed with clotheslines, littered with ashes, refuse,

and papers, with flapping mill clothes, and great duck-house; drab

tenements, all alike, and back of them the bleak brick walls of a

cotton-mill!

But never mind, I was in America! Chaddy was not. The scene I had

looked upon was disheartening, somewhat like a sudden blow in the face,

for those box-like, wooden duck-houses were not to be compared with

the ivy-covered, romantic rows of Hadfield with their flower-gardens,

arches, and slate roofs! But I was in America, anyway!

We had the breakfast-table to ourselves, uncle, aunt, and myself, for

the boarders had gone to work long ago, and this was our holiday, our

first American day! What are those round golden things with holes in?

Doughnuts? They don’t grow on trees, do they? Baked? Isn’t it funny

they call them “nuts?” I don’t taste any nut flavor to them. But I

could not linger too long at the table with all America waiting to be

explored.

“Don’t gulp down things like that,” warned aunt, “you’ll be sick,

proper sick. Chew your food!”

“I want to go out and see America, aunt!”

“All right,” she assented. “Go on out, but mind the American lads, now!”

So I left the house, and the first act done when I reached the gate had

in it, crystallized, the deep reverence an alien feels for America. I

bent down and picked up a handful of dirt. I wanted to feel America.

Then I walked down the street of tenements, looking for an outlet from

them, and hoping to get away from the shadow of the mill. At last the

tenements were passed, and I saw some vacant building lots, with huge,

gaudy sign boards staring from them. It was here that I heard a voice

from across the road, shouting in broad derision, “Strike him!” A group

of school boys were pointing at me. In the hasty survey I gave them, I

noted that they all wore round caps. Mine had a shining visor on it. I

hurried along behind one of those huge signs, took out my pocket knife,

and slashed off the visor. Immediately I felt Americanized. I went

forth with some show of a swagger, for I thought that now, wearing a

round cap, everybody would take me for a full-fledged American!

But it was not so. Under a railway viaduct, where the shadows were

thick and cool, I was met by a lad of my own age, but with twenty times

more swagger and pertness showing on him. When he saw me, he frowned

at first, then, grinning insultingly, he came to within two inches of

me, planted himself belligerently, and mocked, “’Ello, Green’orn! Just

come acrost, ’ast?” Whereat, knowing full well that he was heaping

slander on my mother speech, I threw caution to the winds, hurled

myself at him, and was soon engaged in tense battle. The fight did not

last long, for, keeping up the English schoolboy tradition, I not only

pounded with clenched fists, but freely used my feet--a combination

that put to nought whatever pugilistic skill my antagonist possessed.

“No fair, usin’ feet,” he complained, as he nursed a bruised shin and

hobbled off, “Green’orn!”

That word, “Greenhorn,” startled me. I cautiously felt of my head, for

it flashed into my mind that it was very possible, in this magic land,

that English people grew green horns immediately upon arrival; but I

was consoled to find that none had sprouted overnight.

I continued my exploration, and found myself surrounded on every hand

by mills, tenements, and shops. The streets were very dirty: the whole

scene was as squalid as could be. Yet, the thought kept comforting me,

I was in America. I returned home, covered with burdock burrs, arranged

in the form of epaulets, stripes, and soldier buttons, whistling with

gusto a shrill rendition of “Yankee Doodle.” So ended my first morning

as an American.

_Chapter V. I cannot become a President, but I can go to the Dumping

Grounds_

_Chapter V. I cannot become a President, but I can go to the Dumping

Grounds_

Uncle and aunt went out that afternoon. “We’re going looking for a

tenement,” said uncle. “We’ll be back by supper time, Al. Mind now, and

not get into mischief.” They were gone until past the regular supper

hour, and I waited for them in my room. When they did arrive, uncle

seemed very much excited, and in greeting me he put five cents in my

hand, and then extracted from his pocket a handful of crisp, baked

pieces which he said were “salted crackers.” The only crackers with

which I was acquainted were Chinese crackers, which we exploded on Guy

Fawkes day in England.

“Will they shoot off?” I asked him.

“No, they’re to eat,” he answered. “There’s salt on them to make you

eat more, too.”

“Where do you get them?” was my next question.

“At saloons,” he replied. “When you get a drink of beer, they have

these near to make you drink more.” I looked up startled, and sniffed

the breath of my aunt, who stood near, nodding her head rapidly, as if

answering the questions of a Gatling gun.

“Why,” I gasped, “you’ve both been drinking! Both of you!” Aunt Millie

made a stroke at my head, then lurched in doing it, and almost sprawled

to the floor.

“What if we have, Impudence?” she snapped. “When did you sit in

judgment o’er us, eh?”

Then my uncle, in an apologetic tone, broke in, “There, Al, lad, we

only stopped in one place; sort of celebration, lad, after being

separated so long. Don’t say anything about it, lad. I’ll give you

five cents more.” But Aunt Millie flew into a terrible rage. “Don’t

apologize, Stanwood. Give him a clout i’ the head, and let him be

careful what he says. Drinkin’, eh? I show him,” and she suddenly swung

her fist against my ear, and sent me stumbling to the floor. At that,

Uncle Stanwood rushed at her, although he was lurching, and grasping

her wrist, called, “There, Millie, that’s enough.” That brought on an

altercation, in the midst of which the landlady came up, and said,

“Stop that noise, or I’ll call the police. I’ll give you another day

for to get out of this. I keep a respectable house, mind you, and I

won’t, I simply won’t have drinking taking place here. The boarders

won’t stand for it!”

“Oh, you insultin’ vixin, you!” screamed aunt, brandishing her arms

in the air with savage fury, “Don’t you go to sittin’ on the seat of

virtue like that! Didn’t I see the beer man call in your kitchen this

morning? You hypocrite, you!”

“Oh,” screamed the landlady, leaving the room, “let me hear one more

sound and in comes the police. I won’t stand it!”

“There,” cried Aunt Millie, consoled by the landlady’s departure, “I

knew that would bring her. Now, Stanwood, let’s finish that little

bottle before bedtime. This is our first day in America.” Uncle

Stanwood pulled from his pocket a flask of whisky, and I left them

sitting on the edge of the bed drinking from it.

The next morning Uncle Stanwood went to the mill where he was working,

and told the overseer that he must have another day off in which to

get a tenement and get settled. Then he and aunt found a tidy house

just outside the blocks of duck-houses, and, after renting it, went to

the shopping center, where they chose a complete housekeeping outfit

and made the terms of payment,--“One Dollar Down and a Dollar a Week.”

That plunged us into debt right off, and I later learned that even our

steamship tickets had been purchased from an agency on somewhat the

same terms. The landlady had told Aunt Millie that my uncle had been a

steady drinker since his stay with her, shortly after his arrival in

the United States.

“That accounts for his having so little money, then,” commented my

aunt. “I fail to see where he’s making a much better man of himself

than he was across the water.”

At last Aunt Millie had the satisfaction of “setting up American

housekeeping,” as she termed it. But she did not find much romance in

this new kind of housekeeping.

“See that homely thing,” she complained, indicating the stove, “Give

me that old fireplace and the stone kitchen floor! I’ve a good mind to

pack my tin box and take the next boat,” she half cried, throughout

those first days of Americanization. “I don’t, for the life of me, see

whatever brought me over here to this forsaken place!”

I had to share in the blunders that were made. I was heartily laughed

at by the produce pedler when I asked him for “two pounds of potatoes.”

The yeast-cake man looked at me blankly when I asked for “a penny’s

worth of barm.” Aunt Millie did not see how she was ever going to make

a family baking from a piece of yeast an inch square, when she had

been wont to put in the same amount of flour a handful of brewer’s

barm. On Sunday morning the baker’s cart came with hot pots of beans

crested with burnt lumps of pork. We had to learn to eat beans and

brown bread.

“I’m sure,” said my aunt when I brought home a five-cent loaf, “that

they rise the dough with potatoes; its so light and like dried chips!”

For the first time in my life I was surfeited with pastry. I bought

several square inches of frosted cake from the baker for five cents,

and ate it in place of the substantial food I had lived on in England.

In place of making meals, when she wanted to visit with the neighbors,

my aunt would give me five cents to spend on anything I liked.

The springtime was full on, and I found much pleasure in mixing with

the tenement boys and girls, after school hours. While the schools

were in session, however, I had a lonely time of it. But it was on

those steps that I began to form a conception of what it means to be

an American. It meant to me, then, the ability to speak slang, to be

impertinent to adults, calling one’s father, “Old Man,” one’s mother,

“My Old Woman,” and one’s friend, “that guy.” The whole conception

rounded out, however, in the hope of some day becoming the President of

The United States, and I was considerably chagrined, and my coming to

America seemed a fruitless task, when I learned, from Minnie Helphin, a

German girl, that “You got for to be borned into the United States, for

to be like us ’Mericans, to be Preser-dent. My brudder, Hermann, him

for to be Preser-dent, sometimes.”

I grew tired of being alone while the others went to school, so that

one day, in spite of the warning that the “truant officer” might get

hold of me, I went to one of the school yards, and, through the iron

fence, watched all my friends at play, and immediately I said to

myself, “You ought to go, too!” That night I said to my aunt, at the

supper table, “I want to go to an American school.” She looked at me

with a frown.

“School, is it? Who said so, the government?”

“No,” I answered, trembling in fear of her, “it wasn’t the government.

I get lonely while they are at school. That’s why I want to go.”

She laughed, “Oh, we’ll soon find something for you to do more

profitable than going to school. Go to school! What are you bothering

me about school for? Education’s only for them that are learning to be

gentlemen. You’re a poor lad, and must be thinking more about getting

to work. Here we are, head and ears in debt! Up to our neck in it,

right away! We owe for the furniture. That chair you’re sitting on

isn’t ours. That stove isn’t paid for. Nothing’s ours, hardly the

clothes on our backs. How we are to pay for it all, gets me. You’ve got

to knuckle down with a will, young man, and help us out of the hole

we’re in!”

“But the lad’s got to have schooling, Millie!” protested my uncle. She

turned upon him with flashing eyes, and, half-crying with sudden anger,

shouted at the top of her voice, “Listen to that! I’d like to know what

_you_ have to strike in this for. It’s you and your drinking’s brought

us to this pitch. There you can sit, while we are head and ears in

debt, nothing to call our own, and propose that this Impudent go to

school. He’s got to go out on the street with the McNulty lads and get

wood and coal. That will be something towards helping out. Never mind

about school till the government makes him go. That will be plenty of

time for SCHOOL!”

“Picking wood and coal?” I asked, with interest in this new scheme to

keep me busy.

“Yes,” she explained. “I was in McNulty’s this afternoon, and Mrs.

McNulty was telling me that she’s entirely kept in coal and wood by her

two lads, Pat and Tim. Seems to me that you might make yourself useful

like that, too, instead of bothering your little brain about getting

learning.”

“I don’t like to have him out on the street,” protested Uncle, somewhat

feebly.

“It’s not a case of like or dislike, this time,” said Aunt Millie,

“it’s a case of got to. You don’t bring in enough to pay up everything,

so you _shut up_! You and your fifteen dollars won’t make creation,

not a bit! Get off out of this. Go to the toy store, and get a cart or

something for Al to get wood in, instead of sitting there telling me

what is right and what is wrong. Go on; I’m going to send him out in

the morning.”

Uncle took me with him to the toy store, where I helped select an

express wagon, with tin rims, front wheels that turned this way and

that, and the name, “Champion,” in red letters on its sides. Uncle

rode me home in it, and seemed to enjoy the drag it gave him up hill.

“There,” he whispered when we reached our door, “don’t tell your aunt

that I rode you. She might not like it, Al, lad!”

The next morning Pat and Tim called at the house for me. They had been

generously kept at home that day to show me their “pickings.” I felt

a trifle puffed up over the gaudy appearance of my new wagon, for my

companions’ was a crude, deep box with odd baby-carriage wheels, and

it was named, by a black smudged tar sign, “The Shamrock.” But I did

not long exult, for Tim, a little undersized fellow of fourteen, said,

manfully, “Now, Priddy, if we shows yer things, yer got to divvy up,

see!”

“What?” I asked.

“Got to square up,” he said, and with no more ado he placed himself

in my new wagon. When we were out of sight of the house, Pat gave him

the handle of “The Shamrock,” and placed himself in the depths of that

dilapidated wagon, and I was told to “Drawr us. Yer th’ hoss. See?”

So Pat and Tim took me to the “pickings.” In our excursions we visited

buildings that were in the process of reshingling, when we piled our

wagons to abnormal heights with the dry, mossy old ones. We went

on the trail of fires, where we poked among the fallen timbers for

half-burnt sticks. There were skirmishes in the vicinity of coal-yards,

at the rear of the sheds, where, through breaks and large, yawning

cracks, pieces of coal sometimes dropped through. We scouted on the

trail of coal wagons through cobbled, jolt streets, and managed to

pick up what they lost. We adventured on dangerous spurs of railroad

track, on marshy cinder dumps outside mill fences, and to the city

dumping-grounds for loads of cinders, coal, and wood.

After a washing rainstorm, in the night, my aunt would say, “Now, Al,

there’s been a good rain, and it must have washed the dust off the

clinkers and cinders so that you might get a good bagful of cinders.

You’d best go before someone else gets ahead of you.” True enough, I

would find them in the ash heaps, as black as seeds in a watermelon,

the half-burnt coals, which I loaded in my bushel bag and carried home

in my wagon at five cents a load. If I returned with my bag empty,

there was always some drastic form of punishment given me.

[Illustration: PAT AND TIM LED ME TO THE CHARLES STREET DUMPING

GROUND--WHICH WAS THE NEIGHBORHOOD GEHENNA]

Life on the city dumping-grounds was generally a return to the survival

of the fittest. There was exemplified poverty in its ugliest aspect.

The Charles street dumps were miniature Alps of dusty rubbish rising

out of the slimy ooze of a pestiferous and stagnant swamp, in which

slinking, monstrous rats burrowed, where clammy bullfrogs gulped, over

which poisonous flies hummed on summer days, and from which arose an

overpowering, gassy nauseation. On a windy day, the air was filled by

a whirling, odorous dust of ashes. It stirred every heap of rubbish

into a pungent mass of rot. When the Irishmen brought the two-horse

dump-carts, and swung their load on the heap, every dump-picker was

sure to be smothered in a cloud of choking dust, as sticks, hoes,

rakes, and fingers, in mad competition, sought whatever prize of rag,

bottle, wood, or cinder came in sight. This was the neighborhood

Gehenna, in which the Portuguese, Irish, and Polish dwellers

thereabouts flung all that was filthy, spoiled, and odorous, whether

empty cans, ancient fruit and vegetables, rats from traps, or the

corpses of pet animals or birds.

Pat, Tim, and I, in our search for fuel, met quite a cosmopolitan

life on those ash-hills. There they were, up to their knees in filth,

digging in desperation and competition, with hungry looks and hoarse,

selfish growls, like a wolf pack rooting in a carcass: the old Jew,

with his hand-cart, the Frenchwoman, with her two-year old girl; the

Portuguese girls and the Irish lads, the English and the American

pickers, all in strife, clannish, jealous, pugilistic, and never free

from the strain of tragedy. Pat and Tim could hold their own, as they

were well-trained street fighters.

“Git on yer own side, Sheeny,” Tim used to scream to the venerable

Israelite; “I’ll punch yer in the plexus!” and without a word, but with

a cowed look of the eyes, the old man would retreat from the property

he had been cunningly encroaching upon. Then Tim’s commanding voice

could be heard, “Say, Geeser, hand over that copper-bottomed boiler

to yer uncle, will yer, or I’ll smash yer phiz in!” But when “Wallop”

Smitz brought his rowdy crowd to the dump, it was like an invasion of

the “Huns.” We were driven from the dump in dismay, often with our

clothes torn and our wagons battered.

And oh, what prizes of the dump! Cracked plates, cups and saucers,

tinware, bric-à-brac, footwear, clothing, nursing-bottles and nipples,

bottles with the dregs of flavoring extracts, cod-liver oil, perfumes,

emulsions, tonics, poisons, antiseptics, cordials, decayed fruit, and

faded flowers! These were seized in triumph, taken home in glee, and

no doubt used in faith. There is little philosophy in poverty, and

questions of sanitation and prudence come in the stage beyond it. “Only

bring me coal and wood,” commanded my aunt, in regard to my visits to

the dumps, but I managed to save rubbers, rags, and metal, as a side

product, and get money for them from the old Jew junk-man.

_Chapter VI. The Luxurious Possibilities of the

Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week System of Housekeeping_

_Chapter VI. The Luxurious Possibilities of the

Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week System of Housekeeping_

During the remainder of the school year, from March to June, no

public-school officer came to demand my attendance at school.

“Aren’t we lucky?” commented Aunt Millie. “It gives you such a chance

to help out. The instalment men must be paid, and we need every cent.

It’s _such_ a mercy that the long holiday’s on. It gives you a good

chance.”

By this time I had added to my activities that of carrying my uncle’s

dinner to the mill. My aunt always considered this a waste of time. “It

takes Al away from his own work,” she would remonstrate with my uncle.

“If he has to carry your dinner, I wish he would take it in his wagon

so that he can bring back what coal and wood he finds on the street.”

When that combination was in effect, she was mollified, for I managed

to secure a load of fuel almost every day in my journey from the mill

to the house.

This was the first cotton-mill I ever entered. Every part of it,

inside, seemed to be as orderly as were the rows of bricks in its

walls. It was a new mill. Its walls were red and white, as were the

iron posts that reached down in triple rows through the length of it.

There was the odor of paint everywhere. The machinery seemed set for

display, it shone and worked so smoothly. The floor of the mule-room,

where uncle worked, was white and smooth. The long alleys at the ends

of the mules were like the decks of a ship. The whirling, lapping belts

had the pungent odor of new leather about them, and reminded me of the

smell of a new pair of shoes. The pulleys and shaftings gleamed under

their high polish. Altogether it was a wonderful sight to my eyes,

which, for some time, had only seen dismal tenements, dirty streets,

and drifting ash heaps.

The mill was trebly attractive on chilly, rainy days, when it was so

miserable a task outside to finger among soggy ash piles for coals and

to go splashing barefooted through muddy streets. At such times it was

always a relief to feel the warm, greasy boards of the mill underneath

my feet, and to have my body warmed by the great heat. No matter how it

rained outside with the rain-drops splashing lonesomely against the

windows, it did not change the atmosphere of the mill one jot. The men

shouted and swore as much as ever, the doffers rode like whirlwinds on

their trucks, the mules creaked on the change, the belts hummed and

flapped as regularly as ever.

It was very natural, then, that I should grow to like the mill and hate

the coal picking. My uncle gave me little chores to do while he ate his

dinner. He taught me how to start and stop a mule; how to clean and

take out rollers; how to piece broken threads, and lift up small cops.

When the doffers came to take the cops off the spindles, I learned

to put new tubes on and to press them in place at the bottom of the

spindles. I found it easy to use an oil can, to clean the cotton from

the polished doors of the mules, to take out empty bobbins of cotton

rope, and put in full ones to give a new supply for the thread which

was spun.

I became so valuable a helper during the noon hour that my uncle

persuaded my aunt to put in some dinner for me, also, so that I could

eat it with him. He did this simply because he wanted me to have some

reward for my work besides the fifteen cents a week he gave me. So I

used to sit with him, and he would divide a meat-pie with me, let me

drink some coffee from the top of the dinner pail, and share a piece

of pudding. There was always a bright gleam in his eyes as he watched

me eat, a gleam that said as plainly as words, “It’s good to see you

have a good time, Al, lad!”

By the end of the summer I was so familiar with the mill that I wanted

to spend my whole time in it. I had watched the mill-boys, some of

them not much older than myself--and I was only eleven--and I wanted

to swagger up and down the alleys like them. They were lightly clad

in undershirt and overalls, so that in their bared feet they could

run without slipping on the hot floor. _They_ were working for wages,

too, and took home a pay envelope every Saturday. Just think of going

home every Saturday, and throwing an envelope on the table with three

dollars in it, and saying, nonchalantly, “Aunt, there’s my wages. Just

fork over my thirty cents spending money. I’m going to see the matinee

this afternoon at the theater. It’s ‘Michael Strogroff,’ and they say

there’s a real fight in the second act and eight changes of scenery,

for ten cents. They’ve got specialties between the acts, too!”

Other temporal considerations entered into this desire to go into the

mill. I wanted to have a dinner pail of my own, with a whole meat-pie

in it, or a half-pound of round steak with its gravy dripping over

a middle of mashed potatoes with milk and butter in them! Then there

were apple dumplings to consider, and freedom from coal picking and the

dirty life on the dumps. All in all, I knew it would be an excellent

exchange, if possible. I spoke to my uncle about it one noon-hour.

“Why can’t I work in the mill, too?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t you rather get some learning, Al?” he asked. “You know men

can’t do much in the world without learning. It’s brains, not hands,

that makes the world really go ahead. I wish you could get a lot of

schooling and perhaps go to college. It’s what I always wanted and

never got, and see where I am to-day. I’m a failure, Al, that’s what I

am!”

“But aunt says that I’ve got to go in the mill as soon as I can, uncle.”

His face grew sad at that, and he said, “Yes, through our drinking and

getting in debt! That’s what it’s all leading to! It’s a pity, a sad

pity!” and he grew so gloomy that I spoke no more about the matter that

day.

It was one of the paradoxes of my home, that being heavily in debt for

our steamship tickets and household furnishings, and both giving a

large amount of patronage to the saloons, my aunt and uncle involved

themselves more inextricably in debt by buying clothes and ornaments

on the “Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week” plan. There was no economy, no

recession of tastes, no limit of desire to save us. Every penny that

I secured was spent as soon as earned. I learned this from my foster

parents. Uncle had his chalk-mark at the saloon, and aunt received

regular thrice-a-week visits from the beer pedler. On gala days, when

there was a cheap excursion down the bay, aunt could make a splendid

appearance on the street in a princess dress, gold bracelets, a pair

of earrings, and gloves (Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week plan). When Mrs.

Terence O’Boyle, and Mrs. Hannigan, daughter to Mrs. O’Boyle, and Mrs.

Redden, the loom fixer’s wife with her little baby, came to our house,

after the breakfast had been cleared away, and the men were hard at

work, Aunt Millie would exclaim, “Now, friends, the beer man’s just

brought a dozen lagers and a bottle of port wine. Sit right up, and

make a merry morning of it. You must be tired, Mrs. Hannigan. Won’t

your babby take a little sup of port for warming his stomach?” Of

course, Mrs. O’Boyle returned these parties, as did her daughter and

Mrs. Redden.

My uncle dared not say too much about the visits of the beer-wagon,

because he had his own score at the saloon, and his appetite for drink

was transcendant. Aunt had little ways of her own for pacifying him in

the matter. She would save a half dozen bottles till night, and then,

when he came home, she would say, “Now, Stanwood, after tea, let’s be

comfortable. I’ve six bottles in for you, and we’ll take our comfort

grand!”

By Friday morning the financial fret began. My aunt, as financier

of the house, had the disposal of her husband’s fifteen dollars in

charge. In the disposal of this amount, she indulged in a weird,

incomprehensible arithmetical calculation, certainly original if not

unique. In place of numerals and dollar signs, she dotted a paper with

pencil points, and did some mysterious but logical ruminating in her

head. Her reasoning always followed this line, however:

“Fifteen dollars with a day out, that leaves--let me see--oh, say in

round numbers, thirteen, maybe a few cents out. Well, now, let me see,

out of that comes, first of all, forty cents for union money, if he

pays it this week; two and a half for rent, only we owe fifty cents

from last week, which we must pay this, or else we’ll be thrown out.

Then there’s fifteen cents for that dude of an insurance man--he says

he’ll lapse us if we let it run on like we have. Let him do it, the

old cheat! I don’t believe they’d plan to pay us if any of us should

die. They’re nothing but robbers, anyhow. Where was I, Al? Let me

see, there’s owing a dollar for the furniture--WHEN will we have it

paid for?--and there’s two dollars that should be paid the Jew, only

we’ll have to satisfy him with fifty cents this week, because there’s

a day out.” (The Jew was the man who kept the “New England Clothing

and Furnishing Company,” from whom we had bought our clothes, a set of

furs, and the gold bracelets on instalments.) “This week’s bill for

groceries is five dollars and sixty-three cents, the baker has owing

him about seventy-five, the meat man let me have them two ham bones and

that shank end, and I owe him for that; there’s some white shirts and

collars at the Chinaman’s, but I want to say right here that your uncle

will have to pay for those out of his own spending money. That’s too

much of a luxury, that is; we can’t go on with such gentlemanly notions

in this house and ever get ahead. Oh, these debts, when will they

be paid! That is all I think of except the beer man. He won’t wait,

whatever comes or goes. There, that reckons up to--why, how in the name

of God are we going to face the world this way? I’m getting clean worn

out with this figuring every week!”

After finding that she would not have money enough to go around to

satisfy all the clamorants, she would proceed with a process of

elimination, putting off first the tradesman who received explanations

with the most graciousness. The insurance man she did not care for,

so he had to be put off, but, with his own interests in mind, he

would carry us out of his own pocket until some grand week when aunt

would feel kindly towards him, and she would generously make up all

back payments. Aunt always went to the uttermost limit of credit

possibility, arranging her numerous creditors like checkers on a board

to be moved backwards and forwards week by week. The _beer man got

his pay every week_. He did not allow _his_ bills to grow old. In

arranging for that payment, aunt used to say, as if protesting to her

own conscience, “Well, suppose some others _do_ have to wait! I want

to have a case of lager in over Sunday. We’re not going to scrimp and

slave without _some enjoyment_!”

Week after week this same exasperating allotment of uncle’s wage took

place, with but minor variations. Time after time the insurance would

drop behind and would be taken up again. Time after time the Jew would

threaten to put the lawyers on us. Time after time the grocer would

withhold credit until we paid our bill, yet the beer-wagon stopped

regularly at our door, and Mrs. O’Boyle, her daughter, and Mrs. Redden

would exchange courtesies and bottles. And Aunt was always consoling

her sister women on such occasions with this philosophy: “The rich

have carriages and fine horses and grand mansions for enjoyment; we

poor folks, not having such, must get what comfort we can out of a

stimulating sup!”

And Mrs. Redden would reply, “Yes, Mrs. Brindin, you’re right for

sure. Just warm a bit of that ale with a bit of sugar stirred in, will

you, please? It will warm the baby’s belly. I forgot to bring his milk

bottle, like the absent-minded I am.”

_Chapter VII. I am given the Privilege of Choosing my own Birthday_

_Chapter VII. I am given the Privilege of Choosing my own Birthday_

The reopening of the public-schools in the fall found Aunt Millie

stubbornly refusing to allow me to enter. “I shall never know

anything,” I protested. But she replied, with confidence, “All

knowledge and wisdom isn’t in schools. There’s as much common sense

needed in getting a living. I’ll keep you out just as long as the

truant officer keeps away. Mind, now, and not run blind into him when

you’re on the street. If you do--why, you’ll know a thing or two, young

man!”

Uncle pleaded with her in my behalf, but she answered him virulently,

“Stop that, you boozer, you! We must get out of debt and never mind

making a gentleman, which you seem set on. I’d be ashamed if I was you.

Let him only earn a few dollars, and we’d be relieved. Goodness knows

when you’re going to drop out, the way you’re guzzling things down. It

wouldn’t surprise me to see you on your back any day, and I want to be

ready.”

But some days later, my uncle came back home from work with much to

say. “Look here, Millie, it might be good for us to send Al to school

right away. If he must go in the mill, as it seems he must as soon as

he can, then it’s to our advantage to get him in right away!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he can’t go into the mill, according to law, until thirty

weeks after he’s thirteen, and can show his school-certificate.”

“But he’s only just turned eleven,” protested my aunt, “that would keep

him in the school practically three years. _Three years!_”