“Normally, it would,” agreed Uncle Stanwood, “but it don’t _need_ to

take that long, if we don’t care to have it so.”

“I’d like to know why!”

“Well, Millie,” explained uncle, “Al’s not been to school in America,

yet. All we have to do is to put his age forward when he does go

in--make him a year or two older than he actually is. They won’t

ask for birth certificates or school papers from England. They will

take our word for it. Then it won’t be long before we can have him

working. Harry Henshaw tells me the trick’s common enough. Then when

Al’s worked a while, and we get out of debt, he can go on with his

schooling. It’s the only way to keep ahead, though I do hate to have

him leave school, God knows!”

“None of that cant,” snapped aunt; “if it wasn’t for your drinking he

wouldn’t have to go in the mill, and you know it.”

“Yes,” agreed uncle, sadly, “I know it!”

“Then,” said aunt, once more referring to the immediate subject of the

conference, “it’s all decided that we get him in as soon as possible.”

“Yes,” agreed uncle, “we can put him any age we want, and lie about it

like many are doing. What age shall we make him, Millie?”

“Better push his age forward as near to thirteen as possible,” said

aunt. “He’s big for eleven, as big as some lads two years older. Lets

call him twelve and a half!”

“Twelve, going on thirteen,” answered my uncle.

“Yes,” mused his wife, “but nearly thirteen, say thirteen about

Christmas time, that would give him thirty weeks to go to school, and

he would be in the mill a year from now. That will be all right.”

“If we get caught at it,” warned uncle, “it means prison for us,

according to law.”

“Never mind, let’s take our chances like the rest,” answered aunt with

great decision. “You tell me there aren’t any ever get caught!”

“Oh,” sighed uncle, “it’s safe enough for that matter, though it’s hard

and goes against the grain to take Al from school.”

“_Stop that cant!_” thundered Aunt Millie. “I won’t have it. You want

him to go into the mill just as bad as I do, you old hypocrite!”

“Don’t flare up so,” retorted uncle, doggedly. “You wag too sharp a

tongue. It’s no use having a row over the matter. Let’s dispose of the

thing before bedtime.”

“What else is there to settle?” asked my aunt.

“Al’s got to have a new birthday.” Aunt Millie laughed at the notion,

and said, addressing me, “Now, Al, here’s a great chance for you. What

day would you like for your birthday?”

“June would do,” I said.

“June _won’t_ do,” she corrected, “the birthday has got to come in

winter, near Christmas; no other time of the year is suitable. Now what

part of November would you like it? We’ll give you that much choice.”

I thought it over for some time, for I seriously entered into the

spirit of this unique opportunity of choosing my own birthday. “The

twentieth of November will do, I think,” I concluded.

“The twentieth of November, then, it is,” answered my aunt. “You will

be thirteen, _thirteen_, next twentieth of November, mind you. You are

_twelve, going on thirteen_! Don’t forget that for a minute; if you do,

it might get us all in jail for per-_jury_! Now, suppose that a man

meets you on the streets to-morrow and asks you what your age is, what

will you tell him?”

“I’m thirteen, going on----no, I mean twelve, going on thirteen, and

will be thirteen the twentieth of November!”

“Say it half a dozen times to get it fixed in your mind,” said aunt,

and I rehearsed it intermittently till bedtime, so that I had it

indelibly fixed in my mind that, henceforth, I must go into the world

and swear to a lie, abetted by my foster parents, all because I wanted

to go into the mill and because my foster parents wanted me in the

mill. Thus ended the night when I dropped nearly two years bodily out

of my life, a most novel experience indeed and one that surely appeals

to the imagination if not to the sympathy.

The following week, a few days before I was sent to the public-school,

we removed to a part of the city where there were not so many mill

tenements, into the first floor of a double tenement. There were only

two of these houses in the same yard with a grass space between them

facing the highway. In this space, during the early fall, the landlord

dumped two bushels of apples every Monday morning at half-past eight.

It was definitely understood that only the children of the tenants

should be entitled to gather the fruit. No one was allowed to be out

of the house until the landlord himself gave the signal that all was

ready, so we could be found, peering from the back and front doors,

a quick-eyed, competitive set of youngsters, armed with pillow-slips

and baskets, leaping out at the signal, falling on the heap of apples,

elbowing one another until every apple was picked, when the parents

would run out, settle whatever fights had started up, note with

jealous eyes how much of the fruit their respective representatives

had secured, all the while the amused landlord stood near his carriage

shouting, “Your Harry did unusually well to-day, Mrs. Burns. He beat

them all. What a pillow-slipful he got, to be sure!”

Finally I found myself in an American school. I do not know what grade

I entered, but I do know that my teacher, a white-haired woman with a

saintly face, showed me much attention. It was she who kept me after

school to find out more about me. It was she who inquired about my

moral and spiritual welfare, and when she found that I did not go to a

church, mainly on account of poor clothes, she took me to the shopping

district one afternoon, and with money furnished her by a Woman’s

Circle, fitted me out with a brand new suit, new shoes and hat, and

sent me home with the promise that I would go with her to church the

following Sunday morning. In passing down a very quiet street on my

solitary way to church, the next Sabbath, I came to that high picket

fence behind which grew some luscious blue grapes. I clambered over

the fence, picked a pocketful of the fruit, and then went on to meet

my teacher at the doors of the sombre city church, where the big bell

clamored high in the air, and where the carpet was thick, like a

bedspread, so that people walked down the aisles silent like ghosts and

as sober. It was a strange, hushed, and very thrilling place, and when

the massive organ filled the place with whispering chords, I went back

to my old childish faith, that angels sat in the colored pipes and sang.

My days in the school-yard were very, very strenuous, for I had always

to be protecting England and the English from assault. I found the

Americans only too eager to reproduce the Revolution on a miniature

scale, with Bunker Hill in mind, always.

My attendance at this school had only a temporary aspect to it. When

my teacher spoke to me of going to the grammar school, I replied, “Oh,

I’m going in the mill in a year, please. I want to go into the mill

and earn money. It’s better than books, ma’am.” I had the mill in mind

always. Every day finished in school was one day nearer to the mill. I

judged my fellows, on the school-ground, by their plans of either going

or not going into the mill as early as I.

This desire to enter the mill was more and more strengthened as the

winter wore on, for then I was kept much at home and sent on the

streets after wood and coal. It was impossible to pick cinders with

mittens on, and especially the sort of mittens I wore--old stocking

feet, doubled to allow one piece to hide the holes in its fellow. On a

cold day, my fingers would get very blue, and my wrists, protruding far

out of my coat-sleeves, would be frozen into numbness. Any lad who had

once been in a mill would prefer it to such experiences.

My aunt kept me at home so often that she had to invent a most

formidable array of excuses to send to my teacher, excuses which I had

to write and carry. We never had any note-paper in the house, as there

were so few letters ever written. When there was an excuse to write,

I would take a crumpled paper bag, in which had been onions or sugar,

or, when there were no paper bags, and the school bell was ringing,

requiring haste, I would tear off a slip of the paper in which salt

pork or butter had been wrapped, and on it write some such note as this:

“Dear Miss A: This is to say that Al had to stay home yesterday for not

being very well. I hope you will excuse it. Very truly yours,” and my

aunt would scribble her name to it, to make it authoritative.

It must have been the sameness of the notes, and their frequency,

that brought the white-haired teacher to remonstrate with my aunt for

keeping me away from school so much.

“He can never learn at his best,” complained the teacher. “He is really

getting more and more behind the others.”

My aunt listened humbly enough to this complaint and then unburdened

herself of her thoughts: “What do I care what he learns from books!

There is coal and wood that’s needed and he is the one to help out.

I only let him go to school because the law makes me. If it wasn’t

for the law you’d not see him there, wasting his time. It’s only

gentlemen’s sons that have time for learning from books. He’s only a

poor boy and ought to be earning his own living. Coal and wood is more

to the point in this house than books and play. Let them play that has

time and go to school that has the money. All you hear in these days

is, ‘School, school, school!’ Now, _I_ have got through all these

years without schooling, and others of my class and kind can. Why,

Missis, do you know, _I_ had to go into the mill when I was a slip of

a girl, when I was only _seven_, there in England. I had to walk five

miles to work every morning, before beginning the hard work of the day,

and after working all day I had to carry my own dinner-box back that

distance, and then, on top of that, there was duties to do at home when

I got there. No one ever had mercy on me, and it isn’t likely that I’ll

go having mercy on others. Who ever spoke to _me_ about schooling,

I’d like to know! It’s only people of quality who ought to go to

get learning, for its only the rich that is ever called upon to use

schooling above reading. If _I_ got along with it, can’t this lad, I’d

like to know?”

And with this argument my teacher had to be content, but she reported

my absences to the truant officer, who came and so troubled my aunt,

with his authority, that she sent me oftener to school after that.

About this time, at the latter end of winter, uncle removed to the

region of the mill tenements again. I changed my school, also. This

time I found myself enrolled in what was termed the Mill School.

As I recall it, the Mill School was a department of the common schools,

in which were placed all boys and girls who had reached thirteen and

were planning to enter the mill as soon as the law permitted. If you

please, it was my “finishing school.” I have always considered it as

the last desperate effort of the school authorities to polish us off as

well as they could before we slipped out of their care forever. I am

not aware of any other reason for the existence of the Mill School, as

I knew it.

However, it was a very appropriate and suggestive name. It coupled the

mill with the school very definitely. It made me fix my mind more than

ever on the mill. Everybody in it was planning for the mill. We talked

mill on the play-ground, drew pictures of mills at our desks, dreamed

of it when we should have been studying why one half of a quarter is

one fourth, or some similar exercise. We had a recess of our own,

after the other floors had gone back into their classrooms, and we had

every reason to feel a trifle more dignified than the usual run of

thirteen-year-old pupils who plan to go through the grammar, the high,

and the technical schools! After school, when we mixed with our less

fortunate companions, who had years and years of school before them,

we could not avoid having a supercilious twang in our speech when we

said, “Ah, don’t you wish _you_ could go into the mill in a few months

and earn money like _we’re_ going to do, eh?” or, “Just think, Herb,

I’m going to wear overalls rolled up to the knees and go barefooted all

day!”

If the thumbscrew of the Inquisition were placed on me, I could not

state the exact curriculum I passed through during the few months in

the Mill School. I did not take it very seriously, because my whole

mind was taken up with anticipations of working in the mill. But the

coming of June roses brought to an end my stay there. The teacher gave

me a card which certified that I had fulfilled the requirements of the

law in regard to final school attendance. I went home that afternoon

with a consciousness that I had grown aged suddenly. When my aunt saw

the card, her enjoyment knew no bounds.

“Good for you, Al!” she exclaimed, “We’ll make short work of having you

in the mill now.”

As I attempt to visualize myself to myself at the time of my

“graduation” from the common school, I see a lad, twelve years of

age and growing rapidly in stature, with unsettled, brown hair which

would neither part nor be smoothed, a front tooth missing, having been

knocked out by a stone inadvertently thrown while he was in swimming,

a lean, lank, uncouth, awkward lad at the awkward age, with a mental

furnishing which permitted him to tell with authority when America was

discovered, able to draw a half of an apple on drawing-paper, just

in common fractions, able to distinguish between nouns and verbs, and

a very good reader of most fearsome dime novels. The law said that I

was “fitted” now to leave school and take my place among the world’s

workers!

But now that I was ready to enter the mill, with my school-certificate

in my possession, Uncle Stanwood raised his scruples again, saying

regretfully enough, “Oh, Al mustn’t leave the school. He might never

get back again, Millie.” My aunt laughed cynically, and handed two

letters to her husband.

“Read them, and see what you think!” she said. Uncle read the two

letters, and turned very pale, for they were lawyer’s letters,

threatening to strip our house of the furniture and to sue us at law,

if we did not bring up the back payments we owed on our clothing and

our furniture! “You see, canter,” scoffed aunt, “he’s got to go in.

There’s no other help, is there!” Uncle, crushed, said, “No, there

isn’t. Would to God there was!” And so the matter was decided.

“In the morning you must take Al to the school-committee and get his

mill-papers,” said my aunt, before we went to bed.

“I’ll ask off from work, then,” replied my uncle.

I always enjoyed being in the company of Uncle Stanwood. He was always

trying to make me happy when it was in his power to do so. I knew his

heart--that despite the weakness of his character, burned with great

love for me. He was not, like Aunt Millie, buffeting me about, as if I

were a pawn in the way. He had the kind word for me, and the desirable

plan. On our walk to the school-committee’s office, in the heart of

the city, we grew very confidential when we found ourselves beyond the

keen, jealous hearing of Aunt Millie.

“That woman,” he said, “stops me from being a better man, Al. You don’t

know, lad, how often I try to tone up, and she always does something to

prevent my carrying it out. I suppose it’s partly because she drinks,

too, and likes it better than I do. Drink makes quite a difference in

people, God knows! It’s the stuff that kept me from being a man. Now

that you’re going into the mill, Al, I hope you’ll not be led off to

touch it. Whatever you’re tempted to do, don’t drink!” Then he added,

“I’m a nice one to be telling you that. You see it every day, and

probably will see it every day while your aunt’s with me. I could leave

it alone if she weren’t in the house. But now we’ve got to be planning

what we are going to do in the office that we’re going to, I suppose.

There’s a lie in it for both of us, Al, now that we have our foot in

so far. You’ll have to swear with me that you’re the right, legal age,

though it’s a deliberate lie. My God, who would ever have thought that

I’d come to it. It’s jail if we’re caught, lad, but we won’t be caught.

Don’t do anything but answer questions as they’re put. That will keep

you from saying too much. Stand on your tip-toes, and talk deep, so

that you’ll seem big and old.”

Finally we approached the office of the school-committee, in a dingy,

wooden building, on the ground floor. A chipped tin sign was tacked

underneath the glass panels of the door, and, sure of the place, we

entered. We were in a narrow, carpeted hall, long and darkened, which

passed before a high, bank desk, behind which sat a young man mumbling

questions to a dark woman, who stood with her right hand held aloft,

while a boy stood at her side trying to button his coat as fast as he

could, in nervousness. There were several other boys and a few girls,

seated with their parents on the settee near the wall. We found a place

among them, and watched the solemn proceedings that were taking place

before us, as boys and girls were questioned by the young man, vouched

for by their parents, and sent off with their mill-certificates.

One by one they left us: tall Portuguese lads, with baggy,

pepper-and-salt trousers over their shoe tops, and a shine on their

dark cheeks, little girls in gaudy dresses and the babyishness not yet

worn off their faces; Irish lads, who, in washing up for this solemn

time, had forgotten patches of dirt in their ears and on their necks;

an American boy, healthy, strong, and self-confident, going to join the

ranks of labor.

Then it was my turn. Uncle stood up before that perfunctory young

man and began to answer questions, pinching me every now and then in

warning to remember what he had said. I braced up, as well as I could,

muttering to myself, “Thirteen on the twentieth of November, going on

fourteen, sir!” lest, when the time came, I should make a guilty slip.

My school-certificate was produced, the books were consulted, and that

part of the matter ended. The clerk then looked me over for an instant,

asked me a few questions which I cannot now recall, and then turned

to uncle. Slowly, with hand raised to God, my uncle swore that I was

“thirteen last November.” In about five minutes the examination was

completed. In that time there had been a hurried scratching of a pen, a

flourish or two, the pressure of a blotter and a reaching out of uncle

Stanwood’s hand. The last barrier between me and the mill was down! The

law had sanctioned my fitness for a life of labor. Henceforth neither

physician could debar me, nor clergyman nor teacher nor parent! No

one seemed to have doubted my uncle’s word, nor to have set a moral

plumb-line against me. It had been a mere matter of question and

answer, writing and signing. The law had perfunctorily passed me, and

that was enough!

So we passed out of that office, my uncle grimly clutching the piece

of paper for which he had perjured himself--the paper which was my

warrant, consigning me to years of battling beyond my strength, to

years of depression, morbidity, and over-tired strain, years to be

passed in the center of depravity and de-socializing doctrine. But that

was a memorable and glad moment for me, for to-morrow, maybe, I should

carry my own dinner pail, and wear overalls, and work for wages!

_Chapter VIII. The Keepers of the Mill Gate, Snuff Rubbing, and the

Play of a Brute_

_Chapter VIII. The Keepers of the Mill Gate, Snuff Rubbing, and the

Play of a Brute_

“The first question that we have to settle,” commented my aunt, when we

returned home with the mill-certificate, “is, what is Al going to work

at in the mill?”

“It might be well to let him go into the weave-shed and learn to

weave,” said my uncle; “after he’s learned, he might be able to run

some looms and earn more than he could in any other part of the mill.”

“Meanwhile, he don’t draw any money while he’s learning, and it takes

some months, don’t it?”

“Yes.”

Then I interrupted, “I’d like the weave room, Aunt Millie. I want to

draw as big a wage as I can.”

“You shut your yap!” she retorted, angrily. “You haven’t any finger

in this, mind. I say that he must get to work at something right away,

that will bring in immediate wages.”

“But think of the pay he’d get after he’d learned weaving, Millie,”

retorted my uncle; “It would make up for the time he’d spent in

learning. He’d get treble what he can by taking up sweeping, in the

long run!”

“Into the mill he goes,” concluded my aunt, firmly, “and he goes to

work at something that will pay money right off, I don’t care a snap

what it is!”

“That’s no reason!”

“Reason,” she snapped, “you speaking of reason, and here we are head

over ears in debt. It’s time this fellow was earning his keep.”

Next neighbor to us was a family named Thomas. My aunt exchanged

library books with Sarah Ann Thomas. Uncle went to the Workingmen’s

Club with “Matty” Thomas, and I was the boon companion of

“Zippy” Thomas. When Zippy learned from me that I had secured my

mill-certificate, his joy was unbounded. He gave me a broad wink, and

whispered, “You had to fake it, didn’t you, Al?” I nodded.

“They did mine, too! I won’t tell, you know. I wish you’d come and work

in the same room with me. I’m sweepin’, and get three plunks a week.”

Then he winked again, and said, “There’s some nice girls sweepin’ with

me, too. Won’t it be bully if you can strike it with me. They need

another sweeper. One got fired this morning for boring a hole in the

belt-box to get electricity on a copper wire to kill cockroaches. You

could get his job if you wanted and tried.” I told him to wait for me

till I ran and told my uncle about it.

Uncle came out with me, and met Zippy.

“Where does the second hand live, lad?” he asked.

“He’s Canadian, his name’s Jim Coultier,” announced Zippy. “He lives at

the other end of the tenements.”

We found Jim at home. No sooner was the object of our visit made known

than he nodded his head, and said, “Tol’ him to coom wid Sippy’ morrer

mornin’,” whereat my uncle was so pleased that he invited the Frenchman

to go out with him to Riley’s saloon, to celebrate my entrance into the

mill.

“So you’re going to be a wage-earner, like your uncle, are you?”

laughed my aunt, when I returned with the news of my success. “Run

right down to the Jew’s and get a pair of overalls, the blue ones,

and two two-for-a-quarter towels, the rough, Turkish ones. Then come

right home, and get to bed, for you’ll have to get up in good season

to-morrow morning, so’s to be on hand when Zippy calls for you.”

The next morning I was awakened at half-past five, though it took very

little to awaken me. My aunt was busy with the breakfast when I went

out into the kitchen to wash my face. She turned to me with a kindness

that was unusual, and said, “How many eggs shall I fry, Al? Have as

many as you want this morning, you know.” I said that three would do.

I came into a place of respect and honor in the family that morning. My

aunt actually waited upon me, and watched me eat with great solicitude.

There was toast for me, and I did not have to wait until uncle was

through before I got my share of it. With no compunction whatever, I

asked for a second piece of cake!

Then, while the six o’clock mill bell was giving its half-hour warning,

Zippy knocked on the door, while he whistled the chorus of, “Take back

your gold, for gold will never buy me!” Five minutes more were spent in

listening to moral counsels from my aunt and uncle and to many hints

on how to get along with the bosses, and Zippy and I went out on the

street, where we joined that sober procession of mill people, which,

six mornings out of seven, the whole year round, goes on its weary way

towards the multitude of mills in that city.

Zippy did all he could to make my advent in the mill easy. Before we

had reached the mill gates he had poured forth a volume of sage advice.

Among other counsels, he said, “Now Al, if any guy tells you to go and

grease the nails in the floor, just you point to your eye like this,”

and he nearly jabbed his forefinger into his left eye, “and you say,

‘See any green there?’ Don’t ever go for a left-handed monkey-wrench,

and don’t go to the overseer after a carpet-sweeper; them’s all guys,

and you don’t want to catch yourself made a fool of so easy. If the

boss puts you to sweepin’ wid me, why, I’ll put you on to most of the

dodges they catches a new guy wid, see!”

When we arrived at the mill gates, Zippy looked at the big tower

clock, and announced, “Al, we’ve got twenty minutes yet before the

mill starts, let’s sit out here. You’ll be right in the swim!” and

he pointed to a line of men and boys sitting on the dirt with their

backs braced against the mill fence. Either side of the gate was

thus lined. Zippy and I found our places near the end of the line,

and I took note of what went on. The air thereabouts was thick with

odors from cigarettes and clay pipes. The boys near me aimed streams

of colored expectoration over their hunched knees until the cinder

walk was wet. Everybody seemed to be borrowing a neighbor’s plug of

tobacco, matches, cigarette papers, or tobacco pouch. Meanwhile, the

other employees trudged by. Some of the men near us would recognize, in

the shawled, bent women, with the tired faces, their wives, struggling

on to a day’s work, and would call, jocosely, “’Ello, Sal, has’t got

’ere? I thowt tha’d forgot to come. Hurry on, girl, tha’s oilin’ t’

do!” Or the younger boys would note a pretty girl tripping by, and

one would call out, “Ah, there, peachy!” The “peachy” would turn her

coiffured head and make her pink lips say, “You old mutt, put your

rotten tongue in your mouth, and chase yourself around the block three

times!” A woman, who was no better than her reputation came into view,

a woman with paint daubed on her cheeks, and that was the signal for

a full venting of nasty speech which the woman met by a bold glance

and a muttered, filthy curse. Girls, who were admirable in character,

came by, many of them, and had to run the gauntlet, but they had been

running it so long, day in and day out, that their ears perhaps did not

catch the significant and suggestive things that were loudly whispered

as they passed.

When at last the whistles and the bells announced five minutes before

starting time, the keepers of the gate jumped up, threw away cigarette

stubs, emptied pipes, grumbled foully, took consolation from tobacco

plugs, and went into the mill.

Zippy led me at a run up three flights of iron-plated stairs, through

a tin-covered door, and into a spinning-room. When we arrived, not a

wheel was stirring. I almost slipped on the greasy floor. Up and down

the length of the room the ring-spinning frames were standing like

orderly companies of soldiers forever on dress parade. Above, the

ceiling was a tangled mass of belts, electric wires, pipes, beams, and

shafting. The room was oppressively heated, and was flavored with a

sort of canker breath.

As I stood there, interested in my new surroundings, the wheels began

to move, almost silently, save for a slight, raspy creaking in some of

the pulleys. The belts began to tremble and lap, the room was filled

with a low, bee-like hum. A minute later, the wheels were whirling

with such speed that the belts clacked as they turned. The hum was

climbing up the scale slowly, insistently, and one could not avoid

feeling sure that it would reach the topmost note soon. Then the girl

spinners jumped up from the floor where they had been sitting, and went

to their frames. Some pulled the levers, and tried their machines.

Everybody seemed to be shouting and having a last word of gossip. The

second hand stood near the overseer’s desk with his fingers stuck in

his mouth. He whistled, and that was the signal for all the girls to

start their frames. At last the pulleys had attained that top note in

their humming, like a top, and with it were mixed screams, whistles,

loud commands, the rattle of doffer’s trucks, poundings, the clanking

of steel on steel, and the regular day’s work was begun.

Zippy had gone into the elevator room and changed his clothes. He stood

near me, and I saw his lips move.

“What?” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

He laughed, and then warned, “Don’t thunder so. I can hear you if you

speak lower. You’ll get used to hearing soon. Come with me. The boss

says for me to show you where to dress.”

“To dress!” At last I was to put on overalls and go barefooted! Zippy

led me to the elevator room, a large, quiet place, when the thick door

was shut and there were cheerful windows open, where the cool air came

in. I stripped off my clothes and put on the overalls. I was ready for

work. “The boss wants to see your certificate,” announced Zippy.

[Illustration: I WAS GIVEN A BROOM, AND THEN I FOUND MYSELF ALONE WITH

MARY]

The overseer was a Canadian, like the second hand. He had his feet on

the desk, and was engrossed in the _Morning Mercury_ when I reached

him. He turned around with a terrific speed on his swivel chair,

when we came up to him, and enquired, somewhat kindly, “Well?”

“Please, sir,” I began, “I come to work--to sweep. Jim Coultier told me

to come last night!”

“Take him to Jim. Don’t bother me,” grumbled the overseer. “Jim will

settle it.”

Jim did settle it. He took my certificate and gave it to the overseer,

and then told me to follow him to the other end of the mill. In a

cupboard was a great supply of new brooms, waste, and oil cups. He took

out a broom, spread it wide, and gave it to me.

“Two a week,” he said, “no more.” Then he turned to Zippy, and said,

“Show him whar for to do!”

Zippy, no doubt bursting with importance with all this supervision,

led me to an open space in the middle of the long room, where, sitting

near some waste boxes, were two girls, barefooted, about my own age.

Zippy led me right up to them, and with a wave of the hand announced,

“Girls, this here’s Al Priddy. This is Mary, and t’other’s Jane. Come

on, girls, it’s time to go around the mill before the boss sees us.”

But just then the second hand caught us grouped there, and stormed,

angrily, “Get to work!”

Mary was a very strong girl of thirteen, with a cheery, fat face. She

had been in the mill a half year, and was learning to spin during her

spare time. I noticed that her teeth were yellow, and with a bluntness

that I did not realize I said to her, when she had taken me to show me

how to sweep, “What makes your teeth so yellow, Mary?”

She laughed, and then said, confidentially, “I chew snuff. I’m learning

from the older girls.”

“Chew snuff?”

She nodded, “I’m rubbing, you see,” and we sat down while she showed me

what she meant. She took a strip of old handkerchief from her apron,

and a round box of snuff. She powdered the handkerchief with the snuff,

and then rubbed it vigorously on her teeth.

“I like it,” she announced. “It’s like you boys when you chew tobacco,

only this is the girl’s way.”

My work required little skill and was soon mastered. I had to sweep

the loose cotton from the floor and put it in a can. Then there were

open parts of stationary machinery to clean and a little oiling of

non-dangerous parts. This work did not take more than two-thirds of the

ten and a half hours in the work day. The remainder of the time, Zippy,

the girls, and I spent in the elevator room, where the doffers also

came for a rest.

I had occasion to get very well acquainted with two of the doffers

that first day. Their names were “Mallet” and “Curley,” two French

Canadians. Mallet was a lithe, sallow-faced, black-haired depreciator

of morals, who fed on doughnuts, and spent most of his wages in helping

out his good looks with the aid of the tailor, the boot-maker, and the

barber. He came to the mill dressed in the extreme of fashion, and

always with his upper lip curled, as if he despised every person he

passed--save the good-looking girls. Curley was Mallet’s antithesis

in everything but moral ignorance. He was a towering brute, with a

child’s, yes, less than a child’s, brain. He ran to muscle. He could

outlift the strongest man in the mill without increasing his heartbeat.

His chief diversions were lifting weights, boasting of his deeds with

weights in contests of the past, and the recital of filthy yarns in

which he had been the chief actor.

That afternoon of my first day in the mill, Mallet and Curley shut

themselves in the elevator room with Zippy and me.

“Ah,” drawled Mallet, noticing me, as if for the first time, “who tol’

you for to come here, eh?”

“Because I want to,” I retorted.

“Curley,” he called to the brute, who was grinning at me, “gif heem a

chew, eh?”

The brute nodded in glee, and pulled out a black plug of tobacco and

handed it me.

“You take a big, big chew!” he commanded. I threw the plug on the floor

and stoutly declared, “I won’t.” Both of the companions laughed, and

came over to where I sat. Curley pinned me helplessly to the floor,

while Mallet stuffed the piece of tobacco in my mouth that he had

hastily cut off from the plug. Then Curley took an excruciating grip

on one of my fingers so that by a simple pressure it seemed as if the

finger would snap.

“You chew, or I brak it,” he glared down on me. I refused, and had to

suffer intolerable agony for a minute. Then the brute bent his face

close to mine, with his foul mouth over my eyes.

“I spit in your eye if you do not chew,” he announced, as he looked off

for a second, and then with his mouth fixed he bent over me, and I had

to chew.

In a short time I was deathly sick. This accomplished, the giant gave

me up until he got to his feet, then he took me in his arms, as he

would have taken a child, and carried me out into the spinning-room for

the girls to laugh at.

“Dis man try for to chew plug,” announced Mallet. “Now heem seek. Oh!

oh!” Then I was carried to the third hand, a friend of the doffers, and

Mallet announced, “You’d best fire dis kid. Heem chew and get seek,

boss.” The third hand scowled at me, and said, “Cut it out, kid, if you

stay here.”

When I went home at the end of the day, aunt asked me what sort of a

day I’d had. “Oh,” I said, “when I know the ropes it will be pretty

fair.” I was thinking of the three dollars I should get the second

week. I said nothing about the tobacco incident. When I sat down to

supper, I could not eat. My aunt remarked, “Don’t let it take your

appetite away, Al, lad. It takes strength to work in the mill.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said, and I was not; for, before my imagination,

there rose up the persecuting figures of Mallet and Curley, and I could

still taste the stinging flavor of the plug.

_Chapter IX. A Factory Fashion-plate, the Magic Shirt Bosom, and Wise

Counsel on How to Grow Straight_

_Chapter IX. A Factory Fashion-plate, the Magic Shirt Bosom, and Wise

Counsel on How to Grow Straight_

The ring-spinning room is generally the center of fashion in a

cotton-mill. The reason may be that the ring-spinners, at least in New

England, are generally vivacious French-Canadian girls. There were some

in the mill where I began work, who possessed an inordinate thirst for

ornament and dress. The ring-spinners had clean surroundings and much

easier work than their sisters in the weave-shed. Their labor was more

genteel than that of their sisters in the carding-room.

Marie Poisson, who ran frames which I cleaned and oiled, was the

leader of fashion in the room, and well she was fitted for it. She

resembled a sunflower on a dandelion stalk; she was statuesque even

in a working-dress, and when you saw her hands you wondered how she

ever got through the day without gloves. She lived on doughnuts,

frosted cake, cold meats, and pickles, in order that her board bill

might remain small and allow her a good percentage of her wages for

dress. She had huge coiffures in all the latest styles, and when the

little artistic dabs of powder were absent, her face had a lean and

hungry look. Marie was a splendid specimen of compressed humanity:

she must have suffered the tortures of the inquisition, for what tiny

high-heeled shoes she took off and hid in the waste can, near the coat

hooks! How many times a day did I see her pressing her hands to her

waist as if to unbind herself and get a good gulp of air! How stiff

her neck from its daily imprisonment in a high, starched collar! At

that time, a certain dainty, mincing, doubled-up walk was affected

by the fashionable society women of the country, a gait which was

characterized as “The Kangaroo Walk!” The young ladies had to go in

training for this fashion, had to adjust the body and the general

carriage to a letter S mould, before the mincing daintiness could be

shown. Marie was the first in the spinning-room to attain this goal.

Her success inspired even such humble imitators as Mary and Jane to

mould themselves, by daily posturings and prancings, in a wild effort

to attain the same end.

The inevitable result of so much pride and fashion in the girls was

to make the young men and boys pay strict attention to themselves;

for so the mixing of the sexes tends everywhere, even in a mill.

Probably Mallet, with his excessive vanities, had been produced through

such contact. In any case, such fashion plates as I saw were merely

contrasts which brought out my own insufficiencies. The first sign of

this influence came in my purchase of a ten-cent celluloid rose which

had a perfumed sponge in its heart, which could be filled over and

over again when the scent had evaporated. I had a ten-cent bottle,

large size, of Jockey Club for this purpose, which I also spilled over

my handkerchiefs and clothes, and went to the mill leaving a perfumed

trail behind me. As I could not swagger in such glaring and costly

shirts as Mallet wore, several changes in a week, I bought from a

fakir, one Saturday night, a wonderful shirt bosom, for ten cents! It

permitted the wearer _instantly_ to change the pattern of his shirt

bosom twelve times, ranging all the way from a sober ministerial white,

going through the innocent and inoffensive tints and checks, and at

last reaching the vivid, startling gambler’s stripes and dots! These

marvelous effects were very simply brought about. The Magic Bosom, as

it was called, was a circular piece of stiff pasteboard on either

side of which were pasted six segments of enameled paper, shaped like

letter V’s, just large enough to fit behind the lapels of the vest.

There were six turns of the circle for six patterns on one side, and

then, by merely turning the whole thing around, the other six effects

were possible. The only trouble was, I did not wear a vest in the mill,

and so could only use it to and from the mill, to the theater, where I

changed it during every act, and took care that others should notice

the magic transformation. I wore it to a Sunday-school that I attended

intermittently, and astonished my classmates by six transformations

during the hour’s session!

Then I began to contrast my own hair with Mallet’s black and orderly

curls. His hair always shone, and the barber kept it from growing down

below the ear! That disturbed me, for neither comb nor brush could part

mine or make it stay down. I was so disturbed over the matter that I

confided in my aunt. She laughed, and said that she had a recipe that

would satisfy me. She sent me down to a butcher shop for a large-sized

marrow bone. Then she had me produce my large-sized bottle of Jockey

Club. After boiling the marrow bone in water for two hours, she made me

extract the marrow. Then I had to put in a certain amount of perfume

and give the whole a good stirring. Aunt next produced a cold-cream

jar, and put the decoction in and let it cool over night.

In the morning she said, “Now, Al, that’s a jar of the best hair grease

you could buy for money anywhere. It’s an old recipe and will not only

make the hair stay in place but is, at the same time, good for it. It

makes the hair grow, and keeps it in good condition.” True enough it

had a good odor to it, and _was_ smooth like the stuff the barber put

on my head when he cut my hair. I rubbed some on my head that morning,

and not only did I have the satisfaction of seeing my hair shine, like

Mallet’s, but it also stayed parted in the middle! I went to the mill

that morning, with my cap balanced on the back of my head, so that

everybody could see the shine and the parting. But I had not been in

the mill long before the pomade evaporated, my hair sprang loose, and I

was as badly off as before. By bringing the jar into the mill I managed

to remedy that, and got along very well until one of the doffers rubbed

his palm over my head, discovered the grease, sniffed it, and told all

over the room that I was daubing bear’s grease on my hair to keep it

down.

These items of self-consciousness, so momentous to me at the time, were

some of the signs of adolescence. I was growing very rapidly, and my

whole self was in a whirl of change. Every bone seemed to have sprung

loose, every muscle seemed to be expanding at once, all my strength

seemed to have left my body! My bones were sore and every muscle ached.

An infinite weariness and dizziness took possession of me, day and

night. Sitting or standing I could find no rest. When I bent down, I

suffered undue pain; when I reached for anything, I had to drop my arms

before I had attained the object. I suffered as if jackscrews had been

laid at all angles in my body, and were being turned and turned day and

night without any stop. I could not bend and reach under the frames

to clean them without excruciating pain sweeping over me, and a cold

sweat. If I took hold of a broom, and tried to sweep, I had to drag the

broom wearily after the first few moments. I went home after the day’s

work as tired as if I had been holding up the world all day. And though

I went to bed soon after supper, and slept soundly till the morning, I

awoke as tired as if I had been toiling at a slave’s task every minute

of the night.

I tried, in no complaining spirit, to describe my feelings to my aunt.

“Why, they’re nothing but growing pains, Al,” she said. “You ought to

feel proud that you’re going to be a tall man. It’ll pass. You must get

all the rest you can by going to bed right after supper. That’ll help!”

But she never said, as I wanted her to say, “Get off from work while

you’re suffering so, and don’t try to work while you’re in that

condition.”

During this period, I grew to be supersensitive and self-conscious.

I had a high, shrill voice, of which I was not aware till a doffer

mimicked it one day. It was a small matter to him, but to me it was

tragical. It wore on my imagination all through that day, it haunted me

that night, it intruded itself on my solitude until I inwardly cried

and grew depressed.

“What’s ailing you, lad?” commented my uncle the next morning. “You

look as if you’d lost your best friend?” But I would not unburden

myself of the load of guilty feeling that was on my shoulders--guilt,

because my voice was high, shrill, and childish! I was afraid to meet

people whom I knew on the street, and when I saw one I knew coming

towards me, I would dash to the opposite side, or, if escape like that

were impossible, I would turn towards a shop-window or pretend to be

interested in a bit of dirt on a curbstone.

Mark Waterhouse, an old crippled Englishman, who ran the elevator

and with whom I talked often while in the elevator room, seemed to

understand me thoroughly when I told him how I felt.

“Aye, lad,” he said, “it’s growing tha’ art. Growing swift, too: tall

like a bullrush. It’s bad for thee to be in this ’ot room an’ working.

Tha’ needs fresh hair; lots on’t. Lots o’ fresh hair to get in th’

blood an’ bone, like.”

“But aunt won’t let me stay at home,” I said.

“Aye,” grumbled the old man with a slow nod of his head, “they all say

it. Th’ll do that. It’s the way o’ th’ mill, lad, an’ we’re born to

’t. You con put a plank ower a rose bush while the shoots’r young an’

growing, and the shoots’ll turn aside, go crook’d, get twisted, but

the bush will grow, lad, spite o’ the plank. This work and bad air’s

the plank on top o’ ye, but yeu’ll grow, spite on’t. Yeu’ll grow, for

God started ye growing an’ ye can’t stop God. But yeu’ll grow bent at’

shoulders, legs’ll twist, feet’ll turn, knees’ll bend in! Sure’s ye

live, they will. See me, lad,” he said, “the plank was on top o’ me,

too. I went int’ mill at nine, an’ worked ’ard for a babby, I did!

Con I walk straight? See me,” and he went at a pathetic hobble across

the room, one knee turned in, the other foot twisted out of joint.

“That’s t’ way it took me, lad, when I was in your shoes. I’m not t’

only one, either. Th’ mills full on ’em! Do I freighten ye, lad? Never

mind. Do your best, spite on’t. I tell ye what! Stretch your arms mony

times through t’ day. Oxercise! _Oxercise!_ Stretch thy muscles, thy

legs, an’ get all the chance tha con so tha’ll grow spite on’t. Spite

o’ work, bad air an’ all! Strengthen thasel’, lad. Don’t let twists,

knots, an’ bends coom!”

This old man’s counsel made a deep impression on me. In terror of

the things he described, and which he himself was, I made up my mind

that I would not let my body get bent, crooked, or distorted, so I

did as he said. I stretched myself to my full height many times a

day. I exercised with weights and broom handles, even though I found

it very painful. I gulped in the fresh air when out of the mill, and

walked with my chest thrust out, a stiff, self-conscious, growing lad,

fighting ever against the impending tragedy of a deformed body.

_Chapter X. “Peter One-Leg-and-a-Half” and His Optimistic Whistlers_

_Chapter X. “Peter One-Leg-and-a-Half” and His Optimistic Whistlers_

By the middle of the following winter, I had entered fully into all

the privileges that were mine by virtue of my labor in the mill. The

background of all my privileges was the spending money my aunt gave me.

She apportioned me money on a basis which kept me constantly at work.

I was given ten cents on every dollar that I brought home. This made

me ambitious for advance. It made me keep at work even when I should

have been at home on a sick bed. It drove “loafing days” out of my mind

entirely, for spending money was the _summum bonum_ of my existence.

The kind of things I craved, the only things I found real pleasure in,

cost money.

I attended the ten-cent shows in the theater on Saturday afternoons.

I looked forward throughout the week to a glass of hot beef-tea at

the soda fountain. I would smack my lips long in anticipation of

two-for-five cream puffs or a five-cent pork pie. They meant fully as

much to me, then, as did the Horse Show or a Paris gown to the aspiring

daughter of one of the mill stockholders.

Intermittently, I used to go to the business section of the city alone,

and stop at Cheap John’s, the tobacconist’s, for a treat of second-hand

novels. There was a squat, gaudily decorated Punch standing in front of

Cheap John’s, with a handful of chocolate cigars always extended to the

passers-by. Punch’s jester’s cap, with the bells over his left ear, his

hooked nose and upturned chin, always with a fixed grin on his shiny

face, always seemed a human goblin, saying, “Come in, and have one on

me!”

The interior of Cheap John’s was like a country fair Midway. There

were weight machines, moving pictures, slot instruments, lung testers,

name-plate makers, guessing machines, card-wheels, pool-tables,

racing bulletins, sport scores, displays of sporting apparatus, of

tobacco specialties, of colored sporting posters, hat-cleaning wheels,

clothes-cleaning tables, shoe-blacking alcoves, and a long counter on

which were heaped rows on rows of highly colored, second-hand Wild

West, Sport, Adventure, and Detective romances: a bundle of them for

ten cents! A bundle of these I would purchase, listen to the men’s

voices that came from the dense clouds of smoke, and then I would race

home, a distance of a mile, to examine more closely the prizes of the

night.

The next day being Sunday, I had the privilege of staying in bed, of

having my breakfast brought to me, much as if I had been a convalescent

gentleman. My aunt would find me propped up in bed, with the novels

spread over the bed; and in the midst of a detective romance, always

read first, I would be interrupted by some such words as these: “Well,

his royal highness! Will he have bacon and eggs and a hot cup of

cocoa?” I would merely keep on reading, with a suppressed, growled

“Yep!” and after breakfast, though it would be a pleasant day outside,

I would sit there in bed and read until I became satiated with thrills,

disguised scouts, burgled safes, triumphant, last-chapter endings of

“Justice at last!” reunited lovers and pardoning fathers, when I would

dress, have dinner, and go out into a slumberous Sabbath afternoon, to

stand bored on a street corner until dark, when the gangs of the city

moved and planned exciting escapades.

When my uncle saw me reading the novels, he interposed with, “That’s

cheap stuff, Al, and will never make you any better. You want to read

refining things, the great books. There’s many an exciting one that is

exciting without being cheap. I wish you would let me plan for you.”

I told him that I would--sometime, but I kept on reading Cheap John’s

bargain-counter literature.

The ten and a half hours in the mill, with its humdrum rattle, its

high-pitched hum, the regularity of its fixtures, the monotonousness of

its routine, bullied my nerves into a tamed, cowed state. Day by day,

day by day, day by day, at the appointed time, in the instructed way,

with the same broom or the same-sized bunch of waste, to do the task!

And there wanted to stir in me a schoolboy’s expression of vitality,

a growing lad’s satisfaction in novelty! But all through the hours of

light, from morning till evening, with the sun arising and departing, I

had to listen to, and keep time with, the humming of wheels!

Consequently, when my feet felt the outside world at night or on

Saturdays, at the first refreshing feel of the pure air which took that

deep-lodged heat from my white cheeks, I always promised myself some

exciting pleasure ere the day passed, to stimulate my cowed nerves and

make me a boy again.

[Illustration: “PETER-ONE-LEG-AND-A-HALF” LED US AT NIGHT OVER HIGH

BOARD FENCES]

So I fell heart and soul into the scheme of a group of other boys

who worked in the mill and lived near me. It was my first membership

in a “gang.” It was presided over by a sturdy young Irishman,

who, because he had lost a leg below the knee, was nicknamed, “Peter

One-Leg-and-a-Half.” Peter worked in the mill, and examined cloth in

the weave room. He thrilled our jaded nerves very successfully. We

had ghost-play at night on the street, when he would spit fire, make

phosphorescent writing on a tenement, lead a line of sheeted figures

soberly in review through the night, and close the performance by

hurling a battery of bad eggs at us, his admiring audience. Peter was

King of the Night. He seemed to have the sight of a cat and the cunning

of a fox. He led us at night over high board fences, on the other side

of which, in the dark, we would almost choke ourselves against tight

clotheslines. He taught us organized play, and, wise gang-leader which

he unconsciously was, he changed our adventures and diversions so often

that no complaints were made, and night time, with Peter in it, became

the thrilling objective during my winter work.

For a short season, in the winter, the whole gang joined the club,

which was kept for mill-boys and was supported by the corporation

for which I worked. There were work-benches, checker-rooms, a poorly

equipped gymnasium, seemingly always in the possession of the adults,

and every now and then an entertainment occurred, when some imported

entertainer with talent would be invited to come from his or her

aristocratic home--with a group of “slummers,” usually and divert

us. We thought most of them very tame, resented the manual training

department because we thought ten hour’s work sufficient for one day,

and got what pleasure we could from the entertainments. One man told

us, among other things in a memorable address, to “whistle when you’re

happy and whistle when you’re in danger of feeling mad. Whistling gives

courage, like yells at a football game. Whistle, boys, whistle. It’s a

sign that your courage is good!” That point impressed itself on Peter,

too, for when we left the club that night at nine o’clock (to stay on

the streets till ten), he lined us up like soldiers in review, and thus

addressed us, “Company halt all ready, whistle!” We put our fingers

in our mouths and produced a profusion of vibrant whistles, which

indicated that we were the most courageous and happy lads in the world.

Then Peter, stumping ahead, led us militantly up a street, stooping

every now and then under a street lamp to call out, “All the happy ones

whistle, you!”

_Chapter XI. Esthetic Adventures made possible by a Fifteen-Dollar

Piano_

_Chapter XI. Esthetic Adventures made possible by a Fifteen-Dollar

Piano_

It was late in that winter that the trading instinct cropped out in

my uncle and aunt. They decided to open a candy-store in the tenement

where we lived. For this purpose the landlord was persuaded to allow

them to use the bow window for display purposes. The parlor was fitted

with a small counter, a large store lamp, and a various assortment of

sodas, confectionery and pastry.

That was a prohibition year in city politics, and the tenement thirst

was pronounced to be “something awful!” Desperate men were compelled to

go away on holidays and Saturdays to get what refreshment they could.

The police were on keen watch for illegal selling. They were making

daily raids in different parts of the city. Liquors had been found

in cellars, hidden under the floors, in flasks buried in the bodies

of huge codfish, water-pipes had been cut off from the main pipes

and tapped to barrels of whisky and beer; every trick possible to the

imagination seemed to have been uncovered, yet my aunt undertook to let

some chosen throats in the neighborhood know that she planned to keep a

supply of intoxicants on hand.

I was asked, at night, to take a pint of whiskey here and there to some

shut-in woman like Old Burnt Jane, a cripple from a fire, who always

let tears fall in the food she was cooking as she said: “Wait, wait,

little boy, dearie. I’ll get my mon-ey when I’ve got this taste of

cheese off; wait like a good little boy!”

Our customers, who came for a drink at any time, had a secret sign

whereby they could ask for intoxicants without mentioning them by name.

On Sundays, our kitchen would be filled with men and women having their

thirsts quenched. My Aunt Millie rubbed her hands with satisfaction

over the prosperous business she did.

But one Sunday afternoon there came three plain-clothes men to the

shop. The alarm had been given, and Aunt Millie waited for the raid

with no outward traces of fear. There were some people at the rear

of the house, and they were engaged in a very busy, “manufactured”

conversation about “Charley’s throat trouble” when the officers

came in the back to investigate. If they sniffed the air for traces

of whisky, they only got a superabundance of “mint” and “musk,”

“lozengers” half thrown into the customers’ mouths by Aunt Millie. A

“complete” investigation was made, covering the back-yard, the cellar,

the kitchen, the counter, and the bedrooms, but no illegal wares were

found, and the officers left the shop in chagrin. As they left, my Aunt

Millie bent her fond gaze towards a row of black bottles that stood in

a row in the display window, marked, “Ginger,” “Spruce,” and “Birch.”

“You dear creatures,” she cried, “what a salvation you are!” Whereat,

she took one to the back room, uncorked it, and poured out a noggin of

whiskey apiece for each of her customers, and the “throat trouble” gave

way to a discussion of, “What tasty stuff it is, this whiskey!”

Shortly after this, my uncle was discharged for staying out from work

one morning, after a night of intoxication, and he finally secured a

new position in the South End. Rather than have the fuss of going to

his work on the street-cars, he rented a house, and we removed. This

house was a cottage, the first one we had lived in since coming to

America. It stood on a street corner, near a wide square, where the

thousands of cyclists came after supper for road races, “runs,” and a

circle around the neck of land which jutted out into Buzzards Bay.

Ours was the show place of that neighborhood; from the branches of the

rotting cherry tree in the front yard, I could watch the crowds come

and go, without the trouble of going away from the house. Directly

opposite us, buried in a maze of maple branches, with a high-fenced

yard back of it, stood an Orphan’s Home. The street-car line terminated

in front of our door. It was, to me, a very aristocratic neighborhood

indeed. I felt somewhat puffed up about it. There were several saloons

within a few minute’s walk. My aunt regarded that as a feature not to

be despised. She had explained to uncle: “You see we can get it in

cans, and not have to go and sit away from home and all its comforts.”

This change of residence meant also a change of work for me. I left the

spinning-room, left Curley, Mallet, Mary, Zippy, and the others, and

went into the mule-room to learn back-boying with my uncle.

The mule-room is generally the most skilled section of a cotton-mill.

Its machinery is more human in its action than is a loom, or a carding

machine, or a ring-spinning frame. There are no women or girls in a

mule-spinning room. Men spin the yarn, and boys attend to the wants of

the machines as back-boys, tubers, and doffers.

One Saturday afternoon, shortly after we had settled in our new home,

aunt and uncle went cityward, entered a music store, and said, “We want

to look over a piano.”

The clerk immediately took them in the direction of the high-priced,

latest models.

“No,” said aunt, “them’s not the ones we want to buy. Mister, you

haven’t got something cheaper, have you?”

“How cheap?” asked the clerk.

“Well,” said my aunt, “I shouldn’t care to go very high. Say a

second-hander.”

The clerk took them to the rear of the store, to a dim corner. Here

he turned on the light, and showed a row of table-pianos. Aunt and

uncle stopped before one of them, a scratched, faded veteran, of

many concert-hall and ballroom experiences. Its keys were yellow,

with black, gaps where some were missing. One of the pedal rods was

broken off, while the other was fastened with thin wire. Uncle, with

professional nonchalance, whirled a creaky stool to the desired height,

sat down, turned back his cuffs, and struck a handful of chords, like

a warhorse in battle again, with a vivid reminiscence of old English

public-house days. There came from the depths of the aged lyre a

tinkling, tinpannish strain of mixed flats.

“It’s real good,” smiled my aunt.

“It needs tuning,” commented the clerk.

“How much is it worth, tuned?” asked my uncle.

“Fifteen dollars,” announced the clerk.

“On time, how much?” asked aunt eagerly. “We can only put in three

dollars on this at first,” she said.

“Fifteen dollars on credit, at your own terms,” said the clerk, after a

brief consultation with the manager in the office. “We need the room,

and will be glad to get it out of the way.” “It’s ours, then,” said my

uncle. “Send it down as soon as you get it tuned,” he directed.

When they told me about the purchase, uncle announced, “It will keep me

at home, I hope, and away from the saloons. It will be fine to get to

playing again. I miss it so. I must be all out of practise.”

When the piano did come, and it was established in the front room, I

spent a whole evening in fingering it. There was only one defect about

it,--when uncle played a tune, one of the keys had a fault of sticking,

so that he had to lift it bodily into place, and that somewhat broke in

on the melody he was engaged on.

“But what can you expect for fifteen dollars,” he commented,

philosophically. “When folks are singing with it, I can skip it, an’ it

won’t be noticed much.”

The advent of the piano made my days in the mill lighter to bear.

My uncle had proposed to teach me to play on it at night if I would

practise faithfully. He took pains to elaborate the truth that great

musicians, who had come to fame in the earth, had done so only at the

cost of infinite pains in practise.

“Never mind,” I responded, “I’ll learn, sure enough, and I may give

lessons some day.” So, during work-hours, I was given the scale to

memorize.

“F,a,c,e, is the name of the spaces,” he taught. “Face, it spells; you

can remember that.” Then he had me memorize the notes on the lines, and

then he let me try it on the piano, a night of joy to me. Day after

day I would plan for these practises, and in three regular lessons,

of two weeks’ duration, I had the joy of grinding out my first real

four-part tune. I had been practising laboriously, with a strict regard

for exact time, the selection he had set before me, when he called from

the kitchen, “Hurry up the tune a bit, Al!” I did, and I was bewildered

to find that the chaotic tangle of notes resolved itself, when played

faster, into the simple, universal melody, “Home, Sweet Home!”

But I found not enough patience, after being in the mill all day,

to isolate myself every night in the house when there was fresh air

to enjoy outside, so I told uncle that I had better give up taking

lessons. I could not keep them up. I wanted the fresh air more.

But uncle was loath for me to do that. “I want you to do something else

besides work in the mill,” he remonstrated. About this time, I became

acquainted with Alf Martin, a back-boy, who was playing the piano.

His father worked on the mules next to my uncle. The two men talked

the matter over, and one day Alf told me that the woman he was taking

lessons from, a Miss Flaffer, had said she would give me fifty-cent

lessons for thirty-five cents! My uncle said he would pay half of the

cost, and in spite of my previous abandonment of music, I succumbed to

this scheme, secretly, in my heart, glad of the opportunity of taking

lessons from so fine a lady as Alf told me Miss Flaffer was.

“When you pay for lessons,” said my uncle, “you’ll think more of them.

I could only take you as far as vamping, and you want to do more than

that.”

Previous to this, I had gotten as much joy, during the week’s work,

from anticipations of cream puffs, pork pies, and such minor Saturday

joys, but now I had a piano lesson, a real music-lesson, to engage my

mind, and that was a very cheerful week spent behind the mules. Alf

and I spent much time, when we could get away from the eyes of the

bosses, talking over Miss Flaffer, and I came to understand that she

was a fine woman indeed.

The following Saturday afternoon, then, I took my _Beginner’s Book_,

tied it in a roll and fastened it with twine, and went on the

street-car to a very aristocratic part of the city. It was the part

where, on first landing in America, I had gone on summer days, asking

at the back doors if I might pick the pears that had fallen to the

lawns from the trees.

Miss Flaffer’s house was a very small cottage, with a small piazza at

its front, and with a narrow lawn, edged by a low fence, running around

it. It was altogether a very pretty place, with its new paint, its neat

windows, and the flowers between the curtains. The front steps had

evidently never been trodden on by foot of man, for why did they shine

so with paint! There was not a scratch on the porch, nor a pencil mark.

I looked at the number, at the engraved door-plate, and found that “S.

T. Flaffer” did reside within. A great, cold perspiration dripped from

me as I put a trembling finger on the push-button. I heard an answering

bell somewhere in the depths of the house, and then wished that I might

run away. It seemed so bold a thing for me, a mill-boy, to be intruding

myself on such aristocratic premises. But I could not move, and then

Miss Flaffer herself opened the door!

Oh, dream of neatness, sweetness, and womanly kindness! Miss Flaffer

was that to me at the moment. She was a picture, that put away my aunt

and all the tenement women who came into our house for beer-drinking,

put them away from memory entirely. I thought that she would send me

home, and tell me to look tidy before I knocked at her door, or that I

had made a mistake, and that such a woman, with her white hands, could

not be giving thirty-five cent piano lessons to Al Priddy, a mill-boy!

Oh, how awkward, self-conscious, and afraid I felt as I went across

that threshold and looked on comforts that were luxuries to me! There

was a soft, loose rug on a hardwood, polished floor, on which, at

first, I went on a voyage halfway, when the crumpled rug half tripped

me and I caught desperately at a fragile chair and half wrenched it

from position to stay myself, yet Miss Flaffer did not scold me,

nor did she seem to notice me. Then, as we went through a luxurious

dining-room (where they did nothing but eat meals!), I found myself

bringing my foot down on the train of Miss Flaffer’s dress. Yet, when

the confusion was over, she never made a single reference to it,

though I felt that I ought to ask her if I had torn it. She led me to

a little studio, where, in a curtained alcove, stood a black upright

piano polished like a mirror, and before it a stool, which did not

squeak like ours when turned into position.

When the preliminary examination was over, and I was seated at the

piano, Miss Flaffer asked me to play “Home, Sweet Home” as I had

learned under my uncle’s instruction. I had been so used to the hard,

mechanical working of uncle’s instrument that I naturally pounded

unduly on Miss Flaffer’s, until she politely and graciously said,

“Please do not raise your fingers so high,” and to that end, she placed

two coppers on my hand, and told me to play the tune without letting

them drop.

After the tune, and while Miss Flaffer had left the room to get

her notebook, I noted with chagrin that my perspiring fingers had

left marks on the snowy keyboard where they would surely be seen. I

listened, and heard Miss Flaffer rummaging among some books, and then

desperately spat on my coat cuff and rubbed the keyboard vigorously

until I thought that I had obliterated the traces of my fingers. Then

Miss Flaffer returned, and I tried to act unconcernedly by whistling,

under my breath, “After the Ball.”

By the time the lesson was over, it was raining outside, and Miss

Flaffer said, “I have to go to the corner of the next street, Albert.

(Albert!) I want you to share my umbrella with me so that you will not

get wet.”

I mumbled, “All right, I don’t care if I do,” and prepared to go.

Before we had left the house I had put on my hat twice and opened and

shut the door once in my extreme excitement. Then we went out, and

there rushed to my mind, from my reading, the startling question, “How

to act when walking on the street with a fine woman, and there is an

umbrella?” I said, when we were on the sidewalk, “Please let me carry

that,” and pointed to the umbrella. “Certainly,” she said, and handed

it to me. Before we had attained the corner, I had managed to poke the

ends of the umbrella ribs down on Miss Flaffer’s hat, and to knock it

somewhat askew. I found, also, that I was shielding myself to such an

extent as to leave Miss Flaffer exposed to the torrents of rain. On

the street corner, she took the umbrella, and, as my car came into

view, she said, “Good-by, Albert. You did very well to-day. Practise

faithfully, and be sure to come next week.” I called, “So long,” and

ran for the car.

I only took two other lessons from Miss Flaffer. I never had the

manners to send her word that I could no longer afford them. I was

afraid that she would offer to teach me free, and I could not stand

the confinement to the house after a hard day in the mill. But I had

learned something besides piano-playing with her. I had seen fine

manners contrasted against my own uncouth ways. I had seen a dustless

house contrasted against my own ill-kept home. I had been called

Albert!

_Chapter XII. Machinery and Manhood_

_Chapter XII. Machinery and Manhood_

My work in the spinning-room, in comparison with my new work in the

mule-room, had been mere child’s play. At last the terror of the mill

began to blacken my life. The romance, the glamour, and the charm were

gone by this only a daily dull, animal-like submission to hard tasks

had hold of me now.

Five days of the week, at the outer edge of winter, I never stood out

in the daylight. I was a human mole, going to work while the stars

were out and returning home under the stars. I saw none of the world

by daylight, except the staring walls, high picket-fences, and drab

tenements of that immediate locality. The sun rose and set on the wide

world outside, rose and set five times a week, but I might as well have

been in a grave; there was no exploration abroad.

The mule-room atmosphere was kept at from eighty-five to ninety degrees

of heat. The hardwood floor burned my bare feet. I had to gasp quick,

short gasps to get air into my lungs at all. My face seemed swathed

in continual fire. The tobacco chewers expectorated on the floor, and

left little pools for me to wade through. Oil and hot grease dripped

down behind the mules, sometimes falling on my scalp or making yellow

splotches on my overalls or feet. Under the excessive heat my body

was like a soft sponge in the fingers of a giant; perspiration oozed

from me until it seemed inevitable that I should melt away at last. To

open a window was a great crime, as the cotton fiber was so sensitive

to wind that it would spoil. (Poor cotton fiber!) When the mill was

working, the air in the mule-room was filled with a swirling, almost

invisible cloud of lint, which settled on floor, machinery, and

employees, as snow falls in winter. I breathed it down my nostrils ten

and a half hours a day; it worked into my hair, and was gulped down my

throat. This lint was laden with dust, dust of every conceivable sort,

and not friendly at all to lungs.

There are few prison rules more stringent than the rules I worked under

in that mule-room. There are few prisoners watched with sterner guards

than were the bosses who watched and ordered me from this task to that.

There was a rule against looking out of a window. The cotton mills did

not have opaque glass or whitewashed windows, then. There was a rule

against reading during work-hours. There was a rule preventing us from

talking to one another. There was a rule prohibiting us from leaving

the mill during work-hours. We were not supposed to sit down, even

though we had caught up with our work. We were never supposed to stop

work, even when we could. There was a rule that anyone coming to work

a minute late would lose his work. The outside watchman always closed

the gate the instant the starting whistle sounded, so that anyone

unfortunate enough to be outside had to go around to the office, lose

time, and find a stranger on his job, with the prospect of being out of

work for some time to come.

For the protection of minors like myself, two notices were posted

in the room, and in every room of the mill. They were rules that

represented what had been done in public agitation for the protection

of such as I: rules which, if carried out, would have taken much of the

danger and the despair from my mill life. They read:

“The cleaning of machinery while it is in motion is positively

forbidden!”

“All Minors are hereby prohibited from working during the regular

stopping hours!”

If I had insisted on keeping the first law, I should not have held my

position in the mule-room more than two days. The mule-spinners were

on piece work, and their wages depended upon their keeping the mules

in motion, consequently the back-boy was _expected_, by a sort of

unwritten understanding, to do all the cleaning he could, either while

the machines were in motion or during the hours when they were stopped,

as during the noon-hour or before the mill started in the morning. If a

back-boy asked for the mules to be stopped while he did the cleaning,

he was laughed at, and told to go to a very hot place along with his

“nerve.” I should have been deemed incapable had I demanded that the

machinery be stopped for me. The spinner would have merely said, “Wait

till dinner time!”

Not choosing to work during the stopping hour, I should merely have

been asked to quit work, for the spinner could have made it impossible

for me to retain my position.

[Illustration: THE SPINNERS WOULD NOT STOP THEIR MULES WHILE I CLEANED

THE WHEELS]

So I just adapted myself to conditions as they were, and broke the

rules without compunction. I had to clean fallers, which, like teeth,

chopped down on one’s hand, unless great speed and precautions were

used. I stuck a hand-brush into swift-turning pulleys, and brushed

the cotton off; I dodged past the mules and the iron posts they met,

just in time to avoid being crushed. Alfred Skinner, a close friend of

mine, had his body pinned and crushed badly. I also tried to clean

the small wheels which ran on tracks while they were in motion, and,

in doing so, I had to crawl under the frame and follow the carriage as

it went slowly forward, and dodge back rapidly as the carriage came

back on the jump. In cleaning these wheels, the cotton waste would

lump, and in the mad scramble not to have the wheels run over it to

lift the carriage and do great damage to the threads, I would risk

my life and fingers to extract the waste in time. One day the wheel

nipped off the end of my little finger, though that was nothing at

all in comparison to what occurred to some of my back-boy friends in

other mills. Jimmy Hendricks to-day is a dwarfed cripple from such an

accident. Hern Hanscom has two fingers missing, Earl Rogers had his

back broken horribly. Yet the notices always were posted, the company

was never liable, and the back-boy had no one but himself to blame; yet

he could not be a back-boy without taking the risk, which shows how

much humanity there can be in law.

Legally I worked ten and a half hours, though actually the hours were

very much longer. The machinery I could not clean while in motion, and

which the spinner would not stop for me during work-hours, I had to

leave until noon or early morning. Then, too, the spinner I worked

for paid me to take over some of his work that could be done during

the stopping hours, so that there was a premium on those valuable

hours, and I got very little time out of doors or at rest. There were

generally from three to four days in the week when I worked thirteen

and thirteen hours and a half a day, in order to catch up with the

amount of work that I had to do to retain my position.

In all, at this time I had five men over me who had the right to boss

me. They were: two spinners, the overseer, second hand, and third hand.

One of the spinners was a kindly man, very considerate of my strength

and time, while the other was the most drunken and violent-tempered man

in the room. He held his position only by virtue of having married the

overseer’s sister. He was a stunted, bow-legged man, always in need of

a shave. He wagged a profane tongue on the slightest provocation, and

tied to me the most abusive epithets indecency ever conjured with. He

always came to work on Monday mornings with a severe headache, a sullen

mood, and filled himself with Jamaica ginger, which, on account of its

percentage of alcohol, served him the same palatable, stimulating, and

satisfying functions of whisky without making him unfit to walk up and

down his alley between his dangerous mules.

By having to be in the mill when the machinery was stopped, I was

forced to listen to the spinners as they held their lewd, immoral,

and degenerate conversation. It was rarely that a decent subject was

touched upon; there seemed to be few men there willing to exclude

profligacy from the rote. This was because “Fatty” Dunding, a rounded

knot of fat, with a little twisted brain and a black mouth, was the

autocrat of the circle, and, withal, a man who delighted to talk

openly of his amours and his dirty deeds. As there were no women or

girls in the room, significant words and suggestive allusions were

shouted back and forth over the mules, whisperings, not too low for a

skulking, fascinated boy, hidden behind a wastebox, to drink in, were

in order during the noon-hour. The brothel, the raid of a brothel, the

selling of votes, and references to women, formed the burden of these

conferences. Occasionally some spinner would “Hush” out loud, there

would be a warning hand held up, but only occasionally.

God had not endowed me with any finer feelings than most of the lads

I worked with, but outside the mill I put myself in closer touch with

refining things than some of them: reading, occasional attendance

on a Sunday-school and a mission, and in me there was always a

never-to-be-downed ambition to get an education. That is why those

conversations I was forced to hear were like mud streaks daubed with a

calloused finger across a clear conscience. It was like hearkening to

the licking of a pig in a sty after God in His purity has said sweet

things. I felt every fine emotion toward womankind, and toward manhood,

brutalized, impiously assaulted. I felt part of the guilt of it because

I was linked in work with it all. That mule-room and its associations

became repugnant. My spirit said, “I will not stand it.” My will said,

“You’ll have to. What else can you do?”

That became the question which held the center of the state in my

rebellion against the mill. “What else could I do?”

I wanted an education. I wanted to take my place among men who did more

than run machines. I wanted to “make something of myself.”

The arousement of this ambitious spirit in me was curiously linked

with the reading of a great number of five-cent novels which had to do

with the “Adventures” of Frank Merriwell. This young hero was a manly

man, who lived an ideal moral life among a group of unprincipled,

unpopular, and even villainous students at Yale College. Frank had that

Midas touch by which every character he touched, no matter how sodden,

immediately became changed to pure gold. Frank himself was an intense

success in everything he did or undertook. He preached temperance,

purity of speech, decency, fairness, and honor. He had both feet on the

topmost principle in the moral code. True, with romantic prodigality

he did everything under any given conditions with epic success. If he

went to a track-meet as a spectator, and the pole vaulter suddenly had

a twisted tendon, Frank could pull off his coat, take the pole and at

the first try, smash all existing records. A Shakesperian actor would

be suddenly taken ill, and Frank would leap from a box, look up the

stage manager, dress, and take the rôle so successfully that everybody

would be amazed at his art. It was the same with all branches of sport,

or study, of social adventure--he did everything in championship form.

But back of it all were good habits, fair speech, heroic chivalry, and

Christian manliness, and the reading of it did me good, aroused my

romantic interest in college, made me eager to live as clean a life as

Frank amidst such profligacy as I had to meet. That reading spoiled me

ever after for the mill, even if there had been nothing else to spoil

me. I, too, a poor mill lad, with little chance for getting money, with

so sober a background as was against my life, wanted to make my mark

in the world as the great figures in history had done. I immediately

made a special study of the literature of ambition. I took the Success

Magazine, read the first part of Beecher’s biography, where he made a

tablecloth of an old coat, and fought through adverse circumstances.

I fellowshipped with Lincoln as he sprawled on the hearth and made

charcoal figures on the shovel. I felt that there must be something

beyond the mill for me. But the question always came, “What else can

you do?”

And the question had great, tragic force, too. I had not strength

enough to make a success in the mule-room. I had an impoverished

supply of muscle. My companions could outlift me, outwork me, and the

strenuous, unhealthy work was weakening me. The long hours without

fresh air made me faint and dizzy. One of the back-boys, himself a

sturdy fellow, in fun, poked my chest, and when I gave back with pain,

he laughed, and sneered “Chicken-breasted!” That humiliated me, and I

might have been found thereafter gasping in the vitiated air, enthused

by the hope that I could increase my chest expansion a few inches;

and I also took small weights and worked them up and down with the

intention of thickening my muscles!

“What else can you do?” That haunted me. It would not be long before I

should have to give in: to tell my overseer that I had not strength

enough to do the work. Yet, as if Fate had obsessed me with the idea, I

could not bring myself to think that the world was open to exploration;

that there were easier tasks. I was curiously under the power of the

fatalistic, caste thought, that _once a mill-boy, always a mill-boy_.

I could not conceive there was any other chance in another direction.

That was part of the terror of the mill in those days.

So that dream, “to make something of myself,” with a college appended,

only made my days in the mill harder to bear. When the sun is warm, and

you, yourself are shut in a chilly room, the feeling is intensified

tragedy.

But day after day I had to face the thousands of bobbins I had in

charge and keep them moving. Thousands of things turning, turning,

turning, emptying, emptying, emptying, and requiring quick fingers to

keep moving. A fight with a machine is the most cunning torture man can

face--when the odds are in favor of the machine. There are no mistaken

calculations, no chances with a machine except a break now and then of

no great consequence. A machine never tires, is never hungry, has no

heart to make it suffer. It never sleeps, and has no ears to listen

to that appeal for “mercy,” which is sent to it. A machine is like

Fate. It is Fate, itself. On, on, on, on it clicks, relentlessly,

insistently, to the end, in the set time, in the set way! It neither

goes one grain too fast or too slow. Once started, it must go on,

and on, and on, to the end of the task. Such was the machine against

which I wrestled--in vain. It was feeding Cerebus, with its insatiable

appetite. The frames were ever hungry; there was always a task ahead,

yes, a dozen tasks ahead, even after I had worked, exerted myself to

the uttermost. I never had the consolation of knowing that I had done

my work. _The machine always won._

I did take a rest. I had to steal it, just as a slave would. I had to

let the machine go on, and on, and on without me sometimes, while I

took a rest and let the tasks multiply. That meant double effort after

I got up, getting in the mill a little earlier on the morrow, a shorter

time for dinner at noon. The tasks had to be done in the end, but I

took some rest. I hid from the eyes of the overseer, the second hand,

the third hand, and the spinners, behind waste boxes and posts, and

had spare minutes with a book I had brought in and hidden under some

cotton, or with dreaming about “making something of myself, some day.”

If I let myself dream beyond the minute, a vile oath would seek me out,

and I would hear my Jamaica-ginger-drinking-spinner sneering, “You

filthy----! Get that oiling done!”

_Chapter XIII. How my Aunt and Uncle Entertained the Spinners_

_Chapter XIII. How my Aunt and Uncle Entertained the Spinners_

Meantime there was poor consolation in my home. Aunt and uncle were

drinking every night. Aunt, with the advantage over my uncle, was

drinking much during the day.

When our dinners came, carried by a neighbor’s boy, they were generally

cold, cheerless combinations of canned tongue, store bread lavishly

spread with butter, jelly roll, and a bottle of cold soda water, either

strawberry or ginger flavor! We knew what that sort of dinner meant.

Aunt Millie was drunk at home, too much intoxicated to make a warm

dinner. We had to work through the afternoon, knowing that when we

arrived home at night we should find her either at a saloon, in a back

room at a neighbor’s, or at home, helpless, incoherent.

“Oh, Al,” sighed my uncle, “I don’t see what we’re coming to. What’s

the use of you and me slaving here and she taking on so? Do you wonder,

lad, that it’s hard for me to keep a pledge? It just drives me mad.

Here we have to go on through the day, working ourselves to death, only

to have the money go in that way! It’s torture, and always sets me off

into drink, too!”

When we arrived home on such nights, uncle would have stored up an

afternoon of wrath, and, on entering the house, would unload it on

aunt. She would work herself into an hysterical paroxysm, screaming,

shrieking, pawing, and frothing at the mouth, so that uncle would

suddenly leave her to me and go off for the night to a saloon.

In the morning, when both were sober, would occur the real

disheartening quarrel, when aunt would tell uncle he lied if he said

she had been drunk; the words would get more and more heated until, in

an unbearable fit of rage, insults would be exchanged and lead up to

a struggle, a bloody struggle, that sometimes was on the threshold of

murder.

That day there would be no dinner for us at all, and I would have to

run out to the gates and buy something like an apple-roll or a pie. At

night we would find aunt sitting down, perfectly sober, but silent, and

with no supper ready.

“Get it yourself, you old fiend,” she would announce. Uncle would

leave the house and get his meal in an eating-house, while aunt would

make me a supper and scold me while I ate it, for she always considered

me as one of her secret enemies, and linked my name with my uncle’s in

almost every quarrel.

But there were few quarrels of long standing between my foster parents.

They were generally patched up with a drink or two. Then the wheel

would turn again and produce exactly the same conditions as before.

One day, uncle, in a noble-minded effort to get away from temptation,

told us that he had decided to board in another place, where he could

live in peace. But aunt visited all the boarding-houses that she knew,

finally found her husband in one at the North End, and scolded him

so unmercifully, and unloaded so much weight of family history, that

he came back to the South End with her on the car, took a pail, and

brought back a quart of beer, and things went on as before.

After we had established our piano, and when uncle had become well

acquainted with the spinners, he proposed to invite some of them with

their wives for a “house-warming.”

The event occurred on a Saturday night. “Fatty” Dunding came, and

brought an unknown woman with him, whom he tickled under the chin in

play quite often, and told her that she was a “stunner in that new

piece of hair, even better looking than in t’other lighter shade!” Tom

Fellows, a tall man with a poetic face, brought his wife and child,

a baby of seven months. There was a bass-voiced spinner named Marvin

present, and he brought a roll of music with him.

“What hast’ got in, Stanny?” asked “Fatty.” “Summat to warm cockles o’

t’ ’eart?”

Uncle told him that there was half a barrel of beer in the cellar: that

there were several bottles of port wine in the pantry, and that there

was a taste of whiskey and a few softer drinks on hand.

By eight o’clock the program began to shape itself. Marvin undid his

roll, at the first request, placed before my uncle a copy of “White

Wings,” and asked, as the Hadfield bassoes had in the former days in

the parlors of the “Linnet’s Nest,” and the “Blue Sign,” “Can t’ play

it?”

And uncle responded, “Hum it o’er!” Marvin bent down his head as if in

the act of telling a secret, hummed it over for a few bars, when uncle,

after fingering with his chords, struck the pitch, and began to vamp

gloriously.

“Wait till I play t’ introduction,” he said, and he hunched back, and

confidently “introduced” the air to the satisfaction of all. Marvin

sang “White Wings,” and after he had dampened his pipe with a noggin

of whiskey, he asked uncle if he knew “I am a Friar of Orders Grey?”

Uncle said, again, “Hum it o’er.” When the introduction had been given,

Marvin began a tumbling performance on the low notes that won great

applause.

“Tha’ went so low, lad, that we couldna’ ’ear thee, eh, folks?” grinned

“Fatty.”

“Hear, hear! Hen-core, hen-core!” shouted the audience, but Marvin said

that he’d better rest. Singing low tickled his whistle unduly.

But uncle knew “Sally In Our Alley,” which Tom Fellows sang with a lift

of his light brows at the high notes, and a crinkling of his chin as he

bent his head to get the low ones. Tom had almost a feminine voice; a

romantic chord ran through all his singing, so that he was at his best

in an original song of his, which he had written shortly before and was

having the bandmaster set to four-part music for the piano. “Hum it,”

said uncle. And Tom went through the usual process until uncle had the

key, the time, and the chords. Tom’s song, which was later published at

his own expense, began:

“Bright was the day,

Bells ringing gay,

When to church I brought my Sue.

I felt so proud

’Mongst all the crowd”--

and Uncle Stanwood considerably increased his reputation for

improvisation when at the end of the verse, where Tom lingered lovingly

on the sentiment to the extent of four full rests, he introduced a set

of trills!

With this part of the program over, the company retired to the

cellar, where there was a boarded floor, a man with a concertina, and

a half-barrel of beer. There followed a square dance and some more

singing, but the beer was the chief enjoyment.

It was not long before drink had inflamed the peculiarities of temper

of our guests. “Fatty” let loose his oaths and his foul speech, while

Uncle Stanwood nearly got into a fight with him over it, but was

prevented by Tom Fellows falling against him, in a drunken lurch,

thereby diverting the issue. My aunt’s tongue had a sting to it, and

she was in a corner telling Mrs. Fellows that she, Mrs. Fellows, was

not married to Tom, or else she would have her marriage certificate

framed in the house, or, at least, could show it in the photograph

album! Marvin was roaring “Rule Britannia,” with the energy and

incoherency of a bull. I told “Fatty” that he had better go home or

else I would send for the police, and when he aimed his fist at my

head, I merely dodged and he fell with a crash to the floor and went

off into a piggish snoring. Tom Fellows took his drunken leave,

forgetting his wife, who was just then calling my aunt a series of

uncomplimentary names. In some sort of way, our guests left us in the

early morning. Then I saw that aunt and uncle were safely to sleep

where they chanced to have stumbled, turned out the lamps, locked the

door, and went to bed.

The next morning the Sabbath sun lighted up a sickening memento of

the house-warming. Glasses were scattered about with odorous dregs of

liquor in them. Chairs were overturned, and there were big splotches on

the tablecloth in the kitchen, where port wine had been spilled. There

was a lamp still burning, which I had overlooked, and it was sending

out a sickly, oily fume. The house was like a barroom, with bottles

scattered about the kitchen, clothes that had been left, and my foster

parents yet in a drunken sleep where I had left them!

When Monday morning came, uncle was unfit to go to work. He told Aunt

Millie so, and she immediately scolded him and worked herself in so

violent a rage that the matter ended by uncle picking up some of his

clothes and saying, “This is the last you’ll see of me, Dame! I’m going

to some other place where I’ll be away from it. Al, there, can keep you

on his four dollars a week--if he wants! I’m done!”

“And how about the debts, you--coward!” cried aunt. “I’ll send the

police after you, mind!”

“Let debts go to the dogs,” said my uncle. “You’ll always manage to

have the beer-wagon call!” And then he left the house.

He did not come to work that morning, and when the overseer asked me

where he was, I said that uncle had left home and would not be back, so

a spare man was put on uncle’s mules.

That day, opened with such gloom, was one of thick shadows for me. The

outlook was certainly disheartening. Why should I have to stand it all?

It was my wages that were making some of this squalor possible. It was

my money that helped purchase the beer. Then the old question obtruded

itself: “What other thing can you do? You’ll have to stay in the mill!”

I lost my heart then. I saw no way out from the mill, yet I knew that

in the end, and that not long removed, the mill would overpower me

and set me off on one side, a helpless, physical wreck. It was just a

matter of a year or two, and that waiting line of out-of-works, which

always came into the mule-room in the morning, would move up one, as

the head boy was given my place.

Late in that afternoon, with the hands on the clock going slower than

ever, and the bitterness of my life full before me, I began to think

of suicide. I imagined that it would be the easiest and safest exit

from it all. It would end the misery, the pain, the distraction, and

the impending uselessness of my body for work! It was so easy, too.

I took up a three-pound weight, and put it on a pile of bobbins high

above my head. I balanced it on the edge where the merest touch would

allow it to crash to the floor. Then I experimented with it, allowing

it to fall to see how much force there was to it. I speculated as to

whether it would kill me instantly or not. It was a great temptation.

It just meant a touch of the finger, a closing of the eyes, a holding

of the breath, and it would be over! I tried to imagine how sorry

and repentant my aunt and uncle would feel. It might make them stop

drinking. It was worth doing, then. But suddenly there loomed up the

fact that there are two sides to a grave, and the thought of God, a

judgment, and an eternity dazed me. I was afraid. I put the weight

back, and thought: “Well, I guess I’ll have to do the best I can, but

it’s hard!”

_Chapter XIV. Bad Deeds in a Union for Good Works_

_Chapter XIV. Bad Deeds in a Union for Good Works_

After he had been away from home two weeks, uncle sent us a letter from

a Rhode Island mill-town, informing us that he had the malaria, bad.

Would one of us come and bring him home? There was a postscript which

read: “Be sure and come for me either on a Monday, Wednesday, or a

Friday. They are the alternate days when I don’t have the shivers.”

The day he came home he and aunt patched up peace over a pailful of

beer, and there the matter ended, save that echoes of it would be heard

at the next wrangle. Uncle took his place in one of the long lines

of unemployed that wait for work at the end of the mill alleys. The

expenses of the household were dependent upon the four dollars and a

half I was earning at the time.