Then came the oppressive hot days of summer, with their drawn-out days

with sun and cheerful huckleberry fields in their glory, a summer day

which I could not enjoy because I was shut out from it by the mill

windows, and it was against the rules to look out of them. Some of the

fellows left their work in the summer, and loafed like plutocrats,

having the whole day and three meals to themselves. But if I had loafed

I should have had neither money nor peace. My aunt would have made a

loafing day so miserable for me that I should have been glad to be away

from her scolding. Neither would she have fed me, and, all in all, I

should have been the loser.

But the evenings were long and cool after the mill closed for the

night. From half-past six to ten offered me many enticements, chief

among which was the privilege of roaming the streets with the Point

Roaders, a gang of mill-boys, into which I was admitted after I had

kicked the shins of “Yellow Belly,” the leader. I was naturally drawn

to make friends with Jakey McCarty, a merry fellow of deep designs,

who would put a string around my neck while pretending to plan a walk

somewhere, or have his finger in my pocket, poking for cigarette money,

while talking about the peggy game he had last played.

In the winter we had a very lonesome time of it, as a gang. All we

could do that was exciting included standing on a drug-store corner,

where we splashed the icy waters of a drinking trough in one another’s

faces, or attended, en masse, an indoor bicycle race at the “Rink,”

then in its glory. But we kept very close to the drinking trough, as

money was not very plentiful.

I grew tired of mere loafing, and I finally persuaded Jakey McCarty,

who liked reading, to go with me and visit the public library at

least once a week, when we secured books, and while there also rooted

among the back numbers of illustrated magazines and comic papers

and made a night of it. But the gang resented this weekly excursion

and separation, and various members reproached us with the stigma,

“Libree-struck!” which, I always supposed, carried with it the same

significance as “sun struck,” _i.e._, crazy over books.

In the following spring, though, the gang put up a parallel bar in

an empty lot, and spent the early evenings in athletic diversions.

When darkness came on, there were usually Wild West hold-ups, Indian

dances, and cattle round-ups, in imitation of the features we read in

the five-cent novels we bought and exchanged among ourselves. Then,

with the putting on of long trousers, the gang became more active, and

roamed at night over a broader area than before. Two of the gang even

left us because they were “love-struck.”

At the end of the following winter the catalogue of the various

activities of the gang would read like a chapter from the Hunnish

Invasion. There were Saturday night excursions up to the center of

the city, which led us through Water street, through the Jewish and

the Portuguese sections. As we passed by a grocery store, with tin

advertising signs projecting from its doorway, we would line up, and

each lad would leap in the air and snap his fist against the sign,

producing a loud clatter and leaving it vibrating at great speed.

Before the clerks had appeared on the scene we had passed on, and mixed

with the Saturday night throng of shoppers. Our next stop was before

a Jewish butcher shop, in front of which, on a projecting hook, hung

a cow’s heart and liver. Forming another line, the gang would leap

again and catch that a resounding slap with the palm. Then one of the

fellows poked his head in the shop door, and called, “Say, daddy, we’ll

give yer five cents if you’ll let us take three more slaps!” On the

next block, we came across a venerable Israelite, long-bearded and

somnolent, watching for custom before his one-windowed clothing shop.

Jakey leaped forward, gave a vigorous tug on the venerable’s beard, and

we broke into a run, with a shrieking, horrified group of Jews in mad

pursuit.

[Illustration: HE PLUCKED THE VENERABLE BEARD OF A SOMNOLENT HEBREW]

Our objective in this series of adventures had been the Union for

Good Works, a benevolent institution, with splendid rooms, to which we

went for our shower-bath; cost, five cents!

After we had taken our baths, and while we were busy with nine-pins,

Jakey stood at an opposite end of the room, and plastered the frescoed

walls of the Union for Good Works with the pasty contents of a silver

package of cream cheese, to which he had helped himself at the stall of

a large public market. That same night, when we arrived at the South

End and were disbanding, Jakey set on view before our astonished eyes a

five-pound pail of lard, a cap, and several plugs of tobacco, which he

carried home and presented to his mother, saying that he had been to an

auction!

Such are only a few of the adventures in which we indulged after a

depressing day of it in the mill. One Fourth of July night we roamed

over the city, through the aristocratic section, and in a wild,

fanatical, mob-spirit, entirely without a thought as to the criminal

lengths of our action, leaped over low fences, went through gates and

ran on lawns, tramping down flower-beds, crushing down shrubs, and

snatching out of their sockets the small American flags with which the

houses were decorated.

The only religious declaration the gang made came in the winter, when,

on dull Sunday afternoons, merely for the walk it offered and the

entertainments to which it gave us the entrée, we joined the classes in

the Mission. I enjoyed sitting near the aristocratic, finely dressed

young woman who instructed me as to the mighty strength of Samson, the

musical and shepherding abilities of David, the martial significance

of Joshua, and the sterling qualities of St. Paul. Most truly was my

interest centered in the jeweled rings my teacher wore, or in the

dainty scent that was wafted from her lace handkerchief when she gave

one of those cute little feminine coughs! How far away, after all,

was she from a knowledge of our lives and the conditions under which

we lived! She aimed well, but whatever she intended, in her secret

heart, went very, very wide of the mark. She had no moral thrills to

treat us to, nor did she ever couch her appeal in so definite a way as

to disturb our sins one bit. Perhaps she did not think we needed such

strong medicine. Maybe she classed us as “Poor, suffering mill-boys!”

and let that suffice. We needed someone to shake us by the shoulders,

and tell us that we were cowards, afraid to make men of ourselves.

We needed a strong, manly fellow, just then, to tell us, in plain

speech, about the sins we were following. We needed, more truly than

all else, a man’s Man, a high, convincing Character, a Spiritual

Ideal, The Christ, pointed out to us. But this was not done, and we

left the Mission with derision in our hearts for things we ought to

have respected. Some of the fellows lighted their cigarettes with the

Sunday-school papers they had been presented with.

Many of the Monday evenings in winter were gala nights, when we marched

to the Armory and watched the militia drill. On our return home, we

walked through the streets with soldierly precision, wheeling, halting,

presenting arms, and making skilful formations when “Yellow Belly”

ordered.

In September, the rules were posted in the mill that all minors who

could not read and write must attend public evening school, unless

prevented by physical incapacity. Four of us, “Yellow Belly,” Jakey,

Dutchy Hermann, and myself, had a consultation, and decided that we

would take advantage of the evening school and improve our minds. But

the remainder of the gang, with no other intention than to break up the

school, went also, and though there was a special officer on guard, and

a masculine principal walking on rubber soles through the halls and

opening classroom doors unexpectedly, they had their fling.

An evening school in a mill city is a splendid commentary on ambition.

There one finds ambition at its best. After a day’s work of ten

and a half hours, tired, tired, tired with the long day of heat and

burden-bearing, lungs choking for inhalations of fresh, cool air, faces

flushed with the dry heat of the room, ears still dulled by the roar

and clank of machines, brains numbed by hours and hours of routine--yet

there they are, men grown, some of them with moustaches, growing lads

of fifteen, and sixteen, girls and women, all of many nationalities,

spending a couple of the precious hours of their freedom scratching on

papers, counting, musing over dry stuff, all because they want to atone

for past intellectual neglect. I was there because I wanted to push

past fractions and elementary history, and go on towards the higher

things. I was entirely willing to forego priceless hours for two nights

a week to get more of a knowledge of the rudiments from which I had

been taken by the mill.

I had a seat quite back in the room, because I had intimations that

some of the gang were going to “cut up,” and that a back seat would put

me out of the danger zone of shooting peas, clay bullets, and other

inventions. The man directly in front of me, with a first reader in his

hand, was a tall Portuguese, the father of a family of children.

As soon as the starting gong had clanged through the halls, the

gang began its operations. Dutchy, in spite of his avowed intention

of seriously entering the school, pretended that he could not recite

the alphabet. “Bunny,” a young Englishman, tried to pass himself off

as a Swede and ignorant of English entirely. While the teachers were

busy with the details of organization, the air was filled with riot,

the special policeman was called in, and I along with the gang was

threatened with arrest. Notwithstanding that such careful watch was

maintained, the two weeks of night-school that I attended were filled

with such disturbances that I grew discouraged and abandoned the

project.

Whenever a circus or a fête, like the semi-centennial of the city, was

advertised, the gang always planned to attend, in spite of the fact

that the mills would not shut down. Six of us, in one room, by keeping

away at noon, could cripple the mule-room so seriously that it could

not run, and the spinners would get an afternoon off. Sometimes a group

of spinners would hint to us to stay out that they might have a chance.

That was my first experience in a form of labor-unionism.

Some of the men we worked under in the mill had a club-room, where they

played table games, drank beer when the saloons were legally closed,

and had Saturday night smokers, which my uncle attended, and where he

was generally called upon to “vamp” on the piano.

The gang used to haunt this club, and, when there was a concert on,

would climb up and look in the windows. Finally we decided that we

ought to have a club-room of our own. We sought out and rented a shanty

which had served as a tiny shop, we pasted pictures of actresses, prize

fighters, and bicycle champions around the walls, had a small card

table covered with magazines and newspapers, and initiated ourselves

into the “club.”

The evenings of the first week we occupied, mainly, in sitting in

front of the club, tilted back in chairs, and shouting to other mill

lads, as they passed, in reply to their cynical salutations of “Gee,

what style!” or, “Aw, blow off!” with a swaggering, “Ah, there, Jimmy.

Come in and have a game!” Each member of the club kept from work a

day, the better to taste the joys of club life to the full. About the

fourth week, after we had held forth in a tempestuous whirl of boxing

bouts, card matches, smoking bouts, and sensational novel-reading, the

landlord repented of his bargain, locked us out, and declared to our

remonstrance committee that he could no longer rent us the shanty,

because we had become a “set of meddlin’ ne’er-do-wells!”

So we went back to the drug-store corner, with its drinking trough,

where we could have been found huddled, miserable, like animals who

have so much liberty and do not know how intelligently to use it. For

we knew that after the night, came the morning, and with the morning

another round in the mill, a fight with a machine, a ten hours’

dwelling in heated, spiceless, unexciting monotony, and a thought like

that made us want to linger as long as we dared on that drug-store

corner.

_Chapter XV. The College Graduate Scrubber Refreshes my Ambitions_

_Chapter XV. The College Graduate Scrubber Refreshes my Ambitions_

At sixteen years of age, after three years in a mill-room, and with

the unsocial atmosphere of my home to discourage me, I had grown to

discount that old ambition of mine, to “make something of myself.”

My body had been beaten into a terrifying weakness and lassitude by

the rigors of the mill. My esthetic sense of things had been rudely,

violently assaulted by profanity, immorality, and vile indecencies.

I had come to that fatalistic belief, which animates so many in the

mill, that the social bars are set up, and are set up forever. I should

always have to be in the mill. I should never get out of it!

Recurrently would pop up the old thought of self-destruction. There

was some consolation in it too. I used to feel as if a great weight

rested on my bent back: that it would weigh me down, as Christian’s

sin had weighed him down, only mine was not the weight of sin, but the

burden of social injustice. I seemed to be carrying the burden on a

road that sloped upward, higher and higher, a road dark and haunted

with chilly mists, growing darker, covering it. There was nothing but

a climbing, a struggling ahead, nothing to walk into but gloom! What

was the use of turning a finger to change it? I was branded from the

first for the mill. You could turn back my scalp and find that my brain

was a mill. You could turn back my brain, and find that my thoughts

were a mill. I could never get out--away from the far-reaching touch

of it. The pleasantest thing I enjoyed--an excursion to Cuttyhunk on a

steamer, or a holiday at the ball game--had to be backgrounded against

the mill. After everything, excursion, holiday, Sunday rest, a night of

freedom on the street, an _enjoyable illness_ of a day, a half day’s

shut-down--the _Mill_! The _Mill_!

What difference did it make that I took question-and-answer grammar to

the mill, and hid myself every now and then, to get it in my mind, or

hurried my dinner that I might read it? After all, the mill, the toil,

and the weakness. What difference did it make if I read good books, on

my uncle’s recommendation? After I had gone through romance, there was

the muddy prose of my life in the mill and at home!

Just then Fate, who served me so ungenerously as I thought, worked

one more mortal into her wheel, brought one more from dreams and high

purposes into the ring with me. He was a stout, pudgy-faced, lazy man

of thirty, who came in to mop the floor, oil some of the pulleys, and

keep some of the spare alleys cleaned.

But he was a college graduate! He was the first college graduate I had

ever had the honor to work near. The overseers, our superintendent,

were not graduates of a college. I was thrilled! That man, working at

the end of my alley, scrubbing suds into the floor with a soggy broom,

mopping them dry, pushing his pail of hot water before him, carrying a

shaft pole or mopping along with a pail of grease in his hands--that

man was a _COLLEGE GRADUATE_! All the dreams that I had indulged

relative to classic halls, ivy-covered walls, the college fence, a

dormitory, football field--all those dreams centered around that

lumpish head, for the Scrubber had been to college! He represented to

me the unattainable, the Mount Olympus top of ambitious effort. Suds,

pail, soggy mop, grease pail, and lazy fat were transformed before me,

for _HE HAD BEEN TO COLLEGE_!

What college had he graduated from? I do not know to this day. How had

he stood in college? Another shrug of the shoulders must suffice. _WHY_

was _HE_ in _THE MILL_? I never paused in my hero adoration to ask

that. Sufficient for me that he had been to college!

One day I made so bold as to address this personage. I went up shyly

to him, one day, and said, “Could I make something of myself if I went

to college?” He leaned on his mop, his light brows lifted, his cheeks

puffed out like as if a frog were blowing itself up, then he said in

a thick, dawdling voice, “You could either come out a thick head or

a genius. It depends!” Then I made my great confession, “I’d like to

go to college--if I only had the brains--and the money,” I confided.

Then he seemed to be trying to swallow his tongue, while he thought of

something germane to the conversation in hand.

Then he replied, “It does take brains to get through college!” and then

turned to his work. I was not to be put off. I touched his overall

brace, and asked, “Do you think that I might beg my way into college

some day? Of course I wouldn’t be able to graduate with a title, like a

regular student, but do you think they’d let me study there and try to

make something of myself, sir?” The deference in my address must have

brought him to attention with a little beyond his habitual speed, for

he turned to me suddenly, and said, “Of course they will, you crazy

kid!”

I left him then, left him with a new outlook into the future, for had I

not been told by a REAL college graduate that I could get to college!

Every former dream hitherto chained down broke loose at that, and I

felt myself with a set of made-over ambitions. The seal, the signature,

had been placed on officially. I could do it if I tried. I could get

out of the mill; away from it. I could get an education that would give

me a place outside it!

After that I began to fit myself for college! It was a fitting, though,

of a poor sort. I did not know how to go about it. There seemed to be

none in my circle overeager to tell me how to go about the matter. It

was blind leading all the way.

I thought, first of all, that if I could get hold of some books of my

own, my very own, that would be the first step toward an intellectual

career. I had read the lives of several scholars, and their libraries

were always mentioned. I thereupon resolved that I would own some books

of my own.

The next stage in an intellectual career, was the reading of _DRY_

books. I resolved that the books I purchased should be dry, likewise.

So after that I found real diversion in visiting the Salvation Army

salvage rooms, where they had old books for which they asked five and

ten cents apiece. The rooms were so laden with old clothes and all

sorts of salvage that I had to root long and deep often to bring the

books to light. I also went among the many second-hand shops and made

the same sort of eager search.

After a few months of adventuring I had my own library of dry books.

Their dryness will be evident from the check-list which follows.

I was especially delighted with my discovery, among a lot of old

trousers in a second-hand shop, of a board-cover copy of “Watts on the

Mind.” Its fine print, copious foot-notes, its mysterious references,

as “Seq.,” “i.e.,” “Aris. Book IV., ff.,” put the stamp upon it as

being a very scholarly book indeed. I looked it through, and not

finding any conversation in it, judged that it was not too light.

Its analytical chapter headings, and its birthmark, “182--,” fully

persuaded me that I might get educated from that sort of a book!

In the salvage rooms, where I obtained most of my treasures, I obtained

a black, cloth-bound book, with mottled damp pages and with a mouldy

flavor to it, entitled, “Scriptural Doctrine,” which I knew was a

dry book, because it was a religious book printed in the 40’s. It

undertook to summarize all the great and fearsome doctrines from the

Fall to the Recovery by massing every appropriate passage of scripture

under them, and concluding, with loyalty to the major premises,

with stout assertions that they were all true because they were.

I also found, in the same place and on the same day, a well-worn,

pencil-marked, dog-eared copy of “A History of the Ancient World,”

filled with quaint wood-cuts of ruined walls, soldiers in battle, with

steel spears and bare feet. It was covered with a crumpled piece of

paper bag, and there were only two leaves missing two-thirds of the

way in the book, cutting the history of the Greeks right in two. I

knew that that would be a scholar’s book on the face of it. Scholars

always read about old nations and destroyed cities, and that book was

filled with such records. I was pleased with it. I also picked up,

in the salvage rooms, a three-volume edition of “The Cottage Bible,”

two volumes of which were without covers, and one of them had most of

the leaves stained as if it had been in a fire somewhere. It was an

edition printed somewhere near the beginning of the nineteenth century.

I bought that, first, because it was a three-volume edition on one

subject; it was ponderous. Scholars always had such books. I also

bought it because it had so many notes in it. Half of each page was

covered with them in fine print. To me, that was the highest type of

intellectual book.

I later added to the collection--a thrilling find--a well-bound copy of

a civil trial, in Boston, with every word stenographically recorded,

and interesting to me because Paul Revere was one of the witnesses,

the ORIGINAL Paul Revere that you read of in the school books and see

advertised on coffee and cigars! I wondered how such a valuable work

had ever passed the book collectors who paid thousands for such prizes!

I bought it in much trembling, lest the second-hand shopkeeper should

be aware of the book’s real value and not let me have it for ten cents!

Perhaps there might be an old document hidden in its yellow leaves! It

was with such high, romantic feelings that I made the purchase, and

hurried from the shop as swiftly as I could.

The book-buying, once established, kept with me persistently, and

crowded out for a time the more material pleasures of pork pies, cream

puffs, and hot beef teas. I turned nearly all my spending money into

books. One Saturday afternoon, for the first time, I went into a large

city bookstore where they always had at the door a barrel of whale-ship

wood for fireplaces. I scouted through the shop for bargains, and

besides sundry purchases of penny reproductions of famous paintings, I

secured Sarah K. Bolton’s “Poor Boys who became Famous,” marked down to

fifty cents.

My next purchases at the bookstore were a manilla-covered copy of

Guizot’s “History of France,” “Life of Calvin,” a fifty-cent copy

of the Koran which I purchased because it was an oriental book like

the “Arabian Nights,” and on account of the thrilling legends and

superstitions with which Sale has filled a copious Addenda. I also

bought a fifteen-cent copy of Spurgeon’s “Plow Talks,” and a ten-cent

pamphlet of “Anecdotes for Ministers,” because I reasoned that

ministers always had good stories in their sermons--_ergo_, why not get

a source-book for myself, and be equal with the ministers?

Week by week my stock of books grew, each volume probably wondering why

it ever became mixed in such strange company. I bought no fiction, now.

That was left behind with dime novels and “Boy’s Books!” I was aiming

for _REAL_ scholarship now, and I might fit myself for college. I had a

great longing now to align my tastes with those that I imagined would

be the tastes of real scholars. From “Poor Boys who became Famous” I

learned that some of the heroes therein depicted had the habit of

reading any massive work they laid their fingers on, of borrowing

_GOOD_ books, almost without regard to the subject. Good reading seemed

to be the standard, and to that standard I tried to conform. I went

into the shop of an Englishman who sold things at auction, and, among

his shelves, I found a calfskin-bound “Cruden’s Concordance of the

Bible,” which, I found on examination, contained the “Memoirs” of the

author. That must be good reading, I judged. Any man who could compile

such a mass of references must be dry enough to be a scholar. So I

paid twenty-five cents for the book immediately. The same evening I

also secured two volumes of Hume’s “History of England,” printed, so

the Roman numerals told me, after I had laboriously sought out their

meaning, before the end of the eighteenth century, and with the long

“s” and very peculiar type. One of the volumes had a cover missing.

Though the history did not begin until the later kings, I had the

satisfaction of knowing that at least I had a Good history on my list.

Of a technical and necessary nature, I had two well-worn, and very

old, arithmetics which I bought for two cents, and Binney’s “Compend

of Theology,” which gave a simple and dogmatic summary of Protestant

doctrine from the standpoint of Methodism. To complete my scholarly

equipment, I knew that I ought to keep a journal of my doings, as every

biography that I read mentioned one. So I bought a small pocket diary

for that year. My library was complete.

In my reading of biography, I noted that a scholar or a student had

his books in cases and that he had a study. I resolved to display my

books in a study, likewise. The only available place in the house was

a large front room, which my aunt kept closed because there was no

furniture for it. The floors were carpetless and lined with tacks left

by the last occupant in tearing up the carpet. The wall-paper was dim

with dust, and the windows had the shutters drawn because there were no

curtains for them. During the day the light filtered dismally through

the blinds.

I asked my aunt if I might use that to study in, and she said that “it

wasn’t any fret of hers.” I could. So I placed a bedroom chair, and

secured a small, second-hand writing-desk, and placed them in the room.

I used the white mantel-shelf for my books. I placed them lovingly on

end, and according to color, and they seemed magnificent to me--my

first library! I would stand before them, in proud contemplation, and

whisper to myself, “My own books!”

I have read that in the midst of the rough ocean there are quiet, calm

places where a storm-driven ship may ride at peaceful anchor. That

dingy room, with its pathetic row of dingy, obsolete books, its bedroom

chair and small desk, with the accumulated dust on the bare floor, was

such a place for me.

My first duty after supper was to insert a comment in my diary.

Many times I would leave the table with aunt and uncle in violent

controversy, with one or another of them intoxicated and helpless,

and the line would be, in significant red ink, “Dark To-day!” It was

“Dark To-day,” and “Dark To-day” for weeks and months. There were

few occasions to ever write, “Had a good day, to-day” which, being

interpreted, always meant, “Aunt and uncle are not drinking now and are

living together without rows!” For I always condensed my diary record,

for I thought, “It might be read--some day. Who knows? You’d better not

be too definite!”

I ceased to go out at night now, for I was determined “to make

something of myself,” now that I had read “Poor Boys who became

Famous.” What they had done, I might do. They had gone through

hardships. I could go through mine, if only I was not so weak in body.

One night my aunt severely arraigned me for something I had not said.

She heaped her significant phrases on my head, taunted me, and aroused

in me the murderer’s passion. I immediately ran to my “study,” closed

the door, and received consolation from “Poor Boys who became Famous”

by finding that they had attained fame through patience. I resolved to

bear with fortitude the things that were set in my way.

It was a very elaborate, systematic, and commendable system of

self-improvement that I laid out for myself, chiefly at the suggestion

of a writer in “Success Magazine,” which I was reading with avidity.

“A few minutes a day, on a street-car, at a spare moment, indulged in

some good book, have been sufficient to broadly train many men who

otherwise would _NEVER_ have reached the pinnacle of fame,” it read,

and, acting on that hint, I resolved to get at least a few minutes a

day with my own great books. I would not be narrow, but would read in

them all every evening! I would read law, theology, history, biography,

and study grammar and arithmetic!

So my procedure would be this: After my entry in the diary, I would

read a page from “The Life of Calvin,” then one of the romantic

legends from the appendix to the Koran, always, of course, after I had

dutifully read one of the chapters on “The Ant,” “Al Hejr,” “Thunder,”

“The Troops,” “The Genii” or an equally exciting title like the

“Cleaving Asunder,” the context of which, however, was generally very

dull and undramatic. After the Koran I would pass to “The History of

The Ancient World” and try to memorize a list of the islands of the

Grecian group before the power of Hellas waned. By this time, though,

I was usually unfit to proceed, save as I went into the kitchen and

sprinkled water on my burning forehead; dizzy spells and weakness of

the eyes would seize hold of me, and I would have to pause in utter

dejection and think how grand it must be to be in college where one did

not have to work ten and a half hours in a vitiated atmosphere, doing

hard labor, before one sat down to study. Sometimes I would say: “No

wonder college people get ahead so well--they have the chance. What’s

the use of trying?” And at that dangerous moment of doubt, “Poor Boys

who became Famous” would loom so large that I would renew my ambitions,

and sit down once more to finish my study.

The grammar and the arithmetic I studied in the mill during any minute

that I could snatch from my work. I needed help on those subjects,

and I could ask questions of the College Graduate Scrubber. Sometimes

I would vary the order, and read the theological definitions from

“Cruden’s Concordance,” or the scriptural proofs of great doctrines

in “The Biblical Theology,” with a page or two from the law trial in

which “Paul Revere” had a part.

Whenever I managed to get in a good night of study without suffering in

doing it, I would try to astonish the College Graduate Scrubber with a

parade of what I had memorized. I would get him at a moment when he was

especially indulgent with his time and say:

“Did you ever read in the Koran about that legend of Abraham, when he

saw the stars for the first time and thought about there being one

God?” And the Scrubber would look at me in astonishment and confess,

“I never read that book. What is it?” “Why, didn’t you have it to read

in college?” I would ask in amaze. “It’s the Turk’s Bible, and has the

word ‘God’ in it the most times you ever saw!”

“They don’t read that in college,” he would answer. One day, when I

was asking him to name over the islands of Greece, with their ancient

names--to memorize which I had been working for some time--he lifted

up his mop, made a dab at my bare legs, and stormed, “Sonny, you’re

too fresh. Get away from here.” Seeing that he did not seem especially

sympathetic towards my ambitious effort to be “learned,” I let him

alone, consoling myself with the thought, “Well, how can you expect a

college graduate to bother with you? Mind your own affairs, and some

day you might get to college.”

The gang noticed my defection that winter and asked me what was wrong.

“I’m trying to educate myself,” I said. “Yellow Belly” sniffed, and

called contemptuously: “Say, fellows! he’s got the book-bats, Priddy

has.”

“Well,” I contended, “you fellows can hang around this drug-store

corner from now till doomsday, if you want. I want to learn enough to

get out of the mill. Besides, it’s none of your business what I do,

anyway!” and with that fling I had to run off to escape the stones that

were hurled at me.

_Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent Shut Us out from Eden_

_Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent Shut Us out from Eden_

The numerous quarrels in which my foster parents indulged, and during

which my aunt was not averse to proclaiming loudly from the open

windows insulting comments on her neighbors, finally brought a lawyer’s

letter to the house in which we were living, summarily ordering us

to remove ourselves from the neighborhood. Aunt flew into a passion

when the letter was read, and had all manner of sharp criticism for

“neighbors who don’t tend to their own faults.” Uncle bowed his head

for shame, while I went to my study, shut the door, and prayed through

tears that God would, in some way, give me a good home like many

another boy, and that He might make aunt and uncle more respectable.

Under the shock of this notice my uncle gave up his work, and said that

he was determined to make a new start in some other place.

“I’m going to see, Millie,” he said, “if I can’t get somewhere to

work, in God’s world, where there aren’t saloons to tempt us. I’ll send

for you as soon as I find a place like that.”

Word soon came from him telling me to give up my work; that he had

secured a place in a Connecticut cotton-mill. His letter also stated

that we should live in a quiet little village where there were no

saloons permitted by the corporation, and that our home would be in a

little brick cottage with a flower bed and lawn inside the front gate!

“What a god-send this will prove,” said Aunt Millie, “to get away from

the saloons. Maybe Stanwood’ll keep sober now. Let us hope so!”

So at seventeen years of age I went with my aunt and uncle to the

village, a strange, quiet place after the rumble and confusion of the

city. It was well into spring when we arrived, and we found the village

beautiful with restful green grass and the fruit-tree blossoms.

As soon as we arrived my uncle took us to the corporation

boarding-house, a dismal brick structure, like a mill, with a yellow

verandah on its face. “We’ll have to put up here till the furniture

comes,” announced uncle.

The next morning I took my overalls with me and began work in the

mule-room. It was a pleasant place when contrasted with the places

I had worked in in the city. The overseer did not urge us on so

strenuously. There was not that terrible line of unemployed in the

alley every morning, waiting to take our places.

I was given a place with my uncle, and, when I had my work in hand,

that first day, he would call me into the mule alley and chat with me

about our new prospects.

“We’ll begin all over, Al, and see if we can’t do better by you. Maybe

we’ll be able to send you to school, if we can get some money laid by.

This is our chance. We’re away from drink. The corporation owns the

village and won’t allow a saloon in it. Now I can straighten up and

be a man at last, something I’ve shamefully missed being the last few

years, lad!”

Those first few days of our life in the village, uncle’s face seemed to

lose some of its former sad tenseness.

“Wait till the furniture gets here, lad,” he said, repeatedly. “Then

we’ll settle down to be somebody, as we used to be.”

Then the day that a postal came from the freight office saying that

the furniture had arrived, the superintendent of the mill called my

uncle away from his mules for a long consultation. Then he came back in

company, with my uncle, and mentioned to me that he would like to see

and speak with me in the elevator room. I had only time to note that

uncle’s face was that of a man who has just seen a tragedy. It was

bloodless, and aged, as if he had lost hope.

What could all this mean? A mill superintendent did not usually consult

with his hands except on very grave matters.

I found the superintendent waiting for me, with a very sober face. We

had strict privacy. When he had shut the door, he said: “Al Priddy,

I want to ask you what will seem, at first, a very impertinent and

delicate question. You must give me a frank answer, even though it is

very hard.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, wondering what it was to be.

“Al,” he said, sternly, like a judge, “is your aunt a regular

drinker--of intoxicants?”

So that was the question! I gasped, choked, and with my eyes on the

floor, confessed, “She is, sir.”

“Well,” said the superintendent, “I am very sorry for you, my boy! I am

sorry that you have to suffer because of other people. We cannot allow

women who drink to live in our houses. We will not allow it if we know

about it.”

“But my aunt won’t drink here,” I said. “She said so, and there aren’t

any saloons, sir. That is the reason we came out this way!”

“Your aunt has been seen drunk in the village already!” announced the

superintendent. “What do you think about that?”

The bottom went out of the fairy world we had hoped to live in, with

that news. I could only stand there, dazed, shocked, wild with the

sense of our loss.

“You cannot have the house I promised,” said the superintendent. “I

have told your uncle that. The furniture is not unloaded yet, and it

must return. We will cover the expenses. We cannot permit the other

women to suffer because of your aunt. She obtained liquor in some way

and I shall look into it. You must go back. You cannot have any of our

rents.”

“But, sir,” I pleaded, “won’t you give us a chance. My uncle wants to

do well, and we will try and see that my aunt keeps straight too. When

we get settled, she’ll change. It’s our only chance. If we go back to

the city it will be as bad as before, and that was bad enough. Give us

one more chance!”

“But your aunt has managed to get drunk already, after having been in

town only a few days. What will it be later?”

“Oh, sir,” I went on, desperate at the chance that was slipping from

us, “you are a member of the church and believe in forgiving as Christ

did. Won’t you give us a chance to straighten out? It might take time,

but it means so much to aunt and uncle and--and me!”

“I shall have to refuse,” said the superintendent finally. “I have to

think of the welfare of more families than one. Go back to your work

now, and talk things over with your uncle. I will see him again.”

I went back to my uncle and found him doing his work in a dreamy,

discouraged way. The miserable hours of the morning wore on, and by

noon there was no change in the unfortunate and gloomy situation in

which we found ourselves.

When we had had dinner at the boarding-house, uncle went to his room

and informed Aunt Millie of what had transpired. Then he upbraided her,

scolded her, and called her all manner of brutal names, because he was

crazed with shame. My aunt did not cry out, but merely hurried from the

room and did not return while we were there.

In the afternoon the superintendent came and had a conference with

uncle, the upshot of which was that uncle persuaded him to allow us to

retain our work if we could find a house to rent that was not owned

by the corporation. The overseer, consulted, said that there was a

tenement of three rooms on the outskirts of the village which we might

get, and with this prospect, uncle and I found the tragedy of our

situation decreasing.

“We’ll go right after supper and look up that place,” agreed Uncle

Stanwood. “We might be lucky enough to get it, Al.”

We did not find Aunt Millie at the boarding-house when we arrived, so

we ate our meal together, wondering where she could be and fretting

about her. But after supper we took an electric car that went past

the tenement we were thinking of examining. The car was crowded with

mill-workers going to the city for the evening. Uncle and I had to

stand on the rear platform.

The village had been left, and the car was humming along a level

stretch of state highway bordered with cheerful fields, when our ears

were startled by screams, and when uncle and I looked, as did the other

passengers, we beheld a woman wildly fleeing through the field toward

the river. She was screaming and waving her hands wildly in the air.

“My God!” shouted uncle, “it’s Millie!” He shouted to the conductor,

“Stop, quick, I’ll look after her!” and when the car slowed down we

both leaped to earth and ran, a race of death, after the crazed woman.

We caught her almost near the brink of the river, and found it

difficult to keep her from running forward to hurl herself in it. She

was bent on suicide. But finally we calmed her, and found that she had

been drinking whisky, which always so affected her, that the prospect

of having to return to the city, the thought of having shamed us, had

made her determine on suicide.

She did up her hair, straightened her clothes, and we three went

further down the road, as far as the house we were seeking, examined

the three rooms, and were fortunate enough to rent them. I came away

with a light heart, for we would not have to leave the village after

all.

_Chapter XVII. I Founded the Priddy Historical Club_

_Chapter XVII. I Founded the Priddy Historical Club_

One of the important items we had overlooked in securing the tenement

at the border of the village was a saloon which stood next door to it!

A saloon, too, that was the common resort of the village, because it

stood outside the town lines! “Never mind, lad,” said my uncle, “we’ll

struggle on in spite of it, you see. If only your aunt didn’t have it

under her nose all day! It’ll be hard for her!” But there it was and

matters could not be changed.

The first few weeks passed and found my aunt and uncle solidly

entrenched behind strong temperance resolutions.

With this in mind, I began to enjoy my new situation. I made the

acquaintance of a cloth designer, a young Englishman who loved books

and talked familiarly and intelligently about ambition. He stimulated

me to “make something of myself,” when I unfolded my ambition toward

that goal. We had long walks at night and on Sundays, and I learned

for the first time the joys of sympathetic friendship.

I became a regular attendant at the village church. Indeed, my whole

life seemed washed of its grimy contact among the peace and simplicity

of village life. To go from week to week and not see cheapness and

vulgarity in the profusion I had been face to face with in the city,

was dream-like and delightful. Now I seemed to be on the way toward the

finer things of life.

I responded to my opportunity in a very definite and practical way.

I founded _an historical society_! In my reading, I had picked up

during a holiday in the city a history of the region, a history whose

background was the romantic one of Indian lore and fascinating to me. I

spoke enthusiastically to the cloth designer about it; he and I secured

the interest of three or four other youths, and we resolved thereupon

to establish an historical society, with regular, stated meetings, and

lectures, real lectures!

The work in the mill with such a definite thing in mind as an

historical society became less and less irksome. For the first time,

I could master my duties and enjoy pleasant surroundings. I found

humane conditions for the first time, and was better in mind and body

because of them. In the mill we talked over the society, and resolved,

finally, to call it the Priddy Historical Club. It was formally voted,

too, that I should go into the city, seek out the author of the

ponderous history we had read, and ask him if he would not come out and

lecture to us and start the club.

To see a real, live author and talk to him! What a task for me! How I

was growing in the finer things. If only the College Graduate Scrubber

could know that! It was a vast task, loaded with honor, and truly

symbolical of my new intellectual attainments. So I dressed myself in

my best clothes, put on a celluloid collar, and went into the city.

The author was a grey-bearded man, who was also librarian of the

city library. I found him in his private office, where he listened

graciously to the plans of the Priddy Historical Club. He consented to

come out and address us, and also said that he would typewrite a course

of historical research for our use!

The author met us, one evening, in a room of the church. He told

us fascinating tales of early settlers, and left in our possession

typewritten sheets filled with a well-planned and complete course of

study. That was the first and only meeting of the club. The fellows

lost interest at the formidableness of the program, the cloth designer

had too much work to bother reading on so large a scale, and I--I had

other things of great moment to bother about.

In the middle of summer, a farmer across the way asked me to work for

him, and though the wages were much smaller than I earned in the mill,

and my aunt at first was loath to have me accept, I began work on the

farm. My uncle was greatly pleased with this arrangement.

“Thank God, you have a chance to get some color in your cheeks,” he

said, and aunt laughed. “It would be a good sight to have him put a few

pounds of flesh on his bones, wouldn’t it?”

At last I was out of the mill, out in the fresh air all day! I

stretched my arms, ran, leaped, and worked with great delight. I felt

better, stronger, more inspired than ever to get ahead. But when I went

home, after the day’s work, I was so sleepy through exposure that I

could no longer study. “Never mind,” I thought; “if I only get a strong

body out of it, it will be all right.”

So I milked cows, delivered milk to a village three miles distant, and

worked about the place, all with hearty good will. Every day I would

look in a glass to see if my cheeks were puffing out or getting ruddy.

On Sunday I attended the village church and worshiped near the

superintendent of the mill. I shared the farmer’s pew, and though the

beat of air and sun on my eyes made me very sleepy when in a room,

and though the minister must have wondered why I winked so laboriously

during the service, as I tried to keep awake, I always brought to mind

the pleasant places into which I had been led, and joined with the

minister in a sincere prayer to the God who was leading me.

But one night I went home, and, as I neared the house, I heard

hysterical screams and ran as fast as I could, knowing full well what

I should see. My aunt was squirming on the floor, her hair undone,

and her hat entangled in it. She had on her best dress. Her face was

convulsive with hate, with intense insanity. She was shrieking: “Oh,

he’s killing me, killing me! Help! Murder!” I ran to her, caught the

sickening odor of whisky from her lips and on examination found that

there was a gash on her cheek. Then I stood up and looked around.

Uncle, breathing heavily, sat at the other end of the table, before an

untasted supper. His face was very stern and troubled.

“What have you done?” I shouted. “You’ve been hitting her, you coward!”

“I had to--to protect myself,” he muttered. Then he showed me his face.

The blood was dropping down when he took his handkerchief from it, and

there was a gash in his temple.

“She threw a saucer square at me,” he explained, in a low voice. “She

had a table knife, and she’s stronger than I am, so I just had to smash

her with that,” and he pointed to a stick of wood. “It saved her from

murder, Al. I’m going away. It will maybe bring her round. If I stayed,

she’d raise all sorts of rows and maybe get me to drinking again. She’s

been out to that rum shop. I found her, when I got home, dressed as she

is, trying to warm a can of soup in the frying-pan. She tried to say

she hadn’t been drinking, and then we had the row, lad. Get her to bed,

if you can. Get her out of the way, because when she sees me she’s sure

to begin it all over. I can’t stop here, can I?”

“No, get away,” I said; “we’ve had rows enough. Send us some, money

when you get work, and it’ll be all right. Come and see us, if you get

a good place. We might move away from here.”

He packed his bundle, and went to the city on the next trolley-car, and

left me alone to fight the matter through. I was earning four and a

half dollars a week, and knew that we would have to fight hard if uncle

did not send us any money. After I had placed my aunt in bed and left

her to manage as best she could, knowing that her sobs would die down

and a deep sleep ensue, I went out on the front step and sat down to

think matters over.

“Now everybody in the village, the designer, and all your fine friends

will know that your aunt drinks,” I thought. “What’s the use trying to

be somebody and have these miserable things in the way!” How were we to

get through the winter? It seemed inevitable that I should have to go

back to the mill. The mill was bound to get me, in the long run. It was

only playing with me in letting me out in the sun, the fresh air, and

the fields for a while. The mill owned me. I would have to go back!

We tried to live through the winter, without getting word from my

uncle, on the money I earned. Occasionally aunt would take some liquor,

but she seemed to realize at last that she must not indulge overmuch.

One day, growing desperate, I said to her, “If I catch you drinking

on my money, now, I’ll leave home, you see! I’ll earn money to buy

food, but I won’t earn it for no saloon-keeper, mark my words!” I

was only then beginning to see the light in which my own, personal

rights to freedom stood. My aunt scolded me for awhile at such unheard

of rebellion and such masterly impudence, but she took notice of my

earnestness and knew that I would keep my word.

Finally the struggle became too much for us. We saw that we could not

starve longer on the little wage I was earning, so we made plans to

return to the city where the mills were plenty and where I might earn

more money. My aunt was only too eager to get away from a place where

it was impossible to hide one’s actions.

A card came from my uncle announcing that he had returned to New

Bedford already, and asking us to come and join him.

“Yes,” smiled my aunt, “I’ll bet he’s thinking of his stomach. He

finds, when he’s away, that it isn’t every lodging-house keeper that

can cook potato pies and things as tasty as his own wife. That’s what

he’s homesick for, I’ll bet. Write him that we’ll be on hand. He means

all right, but I’ll guarantee he’s half starved.”

I eagerly accepted the privilege of running ahead to New Bedford to

rent a tenement. I said to myself, “Yes, and I’ll get one so far away

from saloons that the temptation will not be under their noses, anyway!”

That was almost an impossible thing. The rents were excessively high

in such paradises. I had to compromise by renting a downstairs house

on what seemed to be a respectable street. The nearest saloon was five

blocks away.

_Chapter XVIII. A Venture into Art_

_Chapter XVIII. A Venture into Art_

Once more we took up life in New Bedford, with the thunder of many

mills in our ears, and the short year’s sojourn in the Connecticut

village so dim a memory that it was almost out of mind immediately

under the press of sterner, more disquieting things.

All the foulness of life seemed to be raked up at my feet since I had

been in finer, sweeter air. I went back for a few nights to the Point

Road Gang. It was composed of the same fellows save that a few of them

had gone away from home, one to prison for larceny, another to an

insane asylum through excessive cigarette indulgence, and those who

were left had obtained some very wise notions from life.

Jakey was one of those who had gone away from home. One night he joined

his old comrades. “Now, fellows,” he said, with somewhat of a swagger,

“what’s the matter with being sports, eh?” “We are sporty,” announced

Bunny.

“Ah, git off the earth, you!” derided Jakey. “Where’s the booze?”

“Uh, we ain’t skeered of that!” retorted Bunny, “are we, fellows?”

To show that they were not afraid of a drink, some of the gang fished

up some pennies from their pockets and made a pot of fifteen cents.

“Get a can, somebody,” announced Jakey. “I’ll get the growler for you,

with foam on it too.”

A large pail was procured, and Jakey carried it into one of the

saloons. We waited for his return, a huddled group standing in a vacant

lot where we should not be seen. This was to be the gang’s first

official venture into inebriety. When Jakey returned with the can,

it was passed around. We stood in a circle, the better to watch one

another. There were ten in the circle. Only three of us did not take a

drink, for which we were not only duly laughed at, but Jakey heaped all

manner of filthy abuse on our heads. But we did not drink.

[Illustration: THE GANG BEGAN TO HOLD “SURPRISE PARTIES” FOR THE GIRLS

IN THE MILL]

The gang, under the worldly-wise Jakey’s direction, began, also, to

hold “surprise parties” for the girls in the mill. These parties were

arranged for Saturday nights. They were extremely shady functions,

being mainly an excuse for beer-drinking, kitchen dancing, and general

wild sport. The whole affair was based on a birthday, a wedding, an

engagement, or a christening. About twenty-five picked couples were

usually invited.

After the presentation speech, dancing took place on the boards of the

cellar. Then refreshments were passed, and the boys and girls freely

indulged. By midnight the party usually attained the proportions of a

revel, threaded with obscenity, vulgarity, fights, and wild singing.

The gang had drawn away from the things I cared for. I had now to live

my own life, get my own amusements, and make new companionships.

I was working in the mule-room again and this time I was advanced

to the post of “doffer.” I had to strip the spindles of the cops of

yarn and put new tubes on them for another set of cops. But this work

involved the carrying of boxes of yarn on my shoulders, the lifting of

a heavy truck, and often unusual speed to keep the mules in my section

running. The farm work did not appear to have strengthened me very

decidedly. I had to stagger under my loads the same as ever. I wondered

how long I should last at that sort of work, for if I could not do that

work the overseer would never promote me to a spinner, where I could

earn a skilled worker’s wage. I was now near my nineteenth birthday,

and I had to be thinking about my future. I wanted to do a man’s work

now, in a man’s way, for a man’s wage. I learned with alarm, too, that

I was getting past the age when young men enter college, and there I

was, without even a _common school education_! Once more the gloom of

the mill settled down on me. The old despair gripped me.

I did find companionship in my ambitions, now that I had left the

gang. Pat Carroll, an Irishman, wanted to go to college also. He was

far past me in the amount of schooling he had enjoyed, for by patient

application to night-school in the winter, he had entered upon High

School studies. There was Harry Lea, an Englishman, who was even

further advanced than was Pat Carroll. Harry liked big words, and had

tongue-tiring sentences of them, which created rare fun whenever he

cared to sputter them for us. Harry had a very original mind, did not

care much for society, and lived quite a thoughtful life.

These two aided me with knotty problems in arithmetic and grammar. But

it was not often that I had time to spend with them now that my work

was more strenuous and wearing than before.

Harry was attending a private evening school and invited me to the

annual graduation. I asked him if there would be any “style” to it,

thereby meaning fancy dress and well-educated, society people.

“Oh,” said Harry, “there will be men in evening dress, swallow tails,

you know, and some women who talk nice. If they talk to you, just talk

up the weather. Society people are always doing that!”

The graduation was held in one of the lecture halls of the Y. M. C. A.

I sat in my place, watching with rapt eyes the speakers, the fluent

speakers who had such an education! The principal was a college man.

Him I watched with veritable worship. He had reached the goal I craved

so eagerly, so vainly to reach. I wondered at the time if he felt

bigger than other people because he had a college degree! When the

program neared its end, a young man was announced to read an essay, the

principal stating that the young man had been _studying English but

five months_, and saying it so emphatically that I thought the reader

must be a green Swede, so I marvelled greatly when the fluent diction

sounded on my ears, for I did not hear a single sound with a Swedish

accent to it!

One Monday morning there was a notice posted in the mill to the effect

that an evening school of design would be opened in the Textile

School. I inquired about it, and found that I could learn all sorts

of artistic designing--wall-paper, book, and cloth, free of tuition.

“Here’s my chance,” I thought. “I can learn a trade that will pay well,

get me out of the mill, and not be too much of a tax on what little

strength the mill has left me.” So I went joyously “up city,” and

entered the splendid building used as a Textile College. I enrolled at

the office and was assigned to a classroom.

I went to my task joyfully with dreams of future success, for I liked

drawing. Had I not traced newspaper pictures ever since I was a small

boy? Were not the white-painted walls of the mills I had worked in

decorated with cow-boys, rustic pictures, and Indian’s heads, drawn by

my pencil?

Three nights a week I walked back and forth to the Textile School,

tired, but ambitious to make the most of my great opportunity. Week by

week I went through various lessons until I began to design wall-papers

with water-color and to make book-cover designs on which I prided

myself, and on which my teacher complimented me.

Then my eyes began to weaken under the glare of the lights, and the

long strain they had been under during the day, through staring at

cotton threads and the fatigue of long hours under the mill lights.

My conventionalized leaves and flowers, my water-lily book designs,

my tracings for Scotch plaids--all grew hazy, jumpy, distorted, and

my brush fell from a weary clutch. In dismal submission I had to give

up that ambition. The mill was bound to have me. What was the use of

fighting against it?

But now that the direction had been indicated by the Textile School,

I thought that I might learn to draw in my spare time, and outside

regular classrooms, for just then a Correspondence School agent came to

me and offered me instruction in that line at a very reasonable rate.

I enrolled myself, and thought that with the choice of my hours of

study I could readily learn the art of designing. But a few evenings

at elementary scribbling and a few dollars for advance lessons took

away my courage. The whole thing seemed a blind leading. I cut off the

lessons and gave up in utter despair.

Then, one night, as I was on my way from work, I was met near our

house by a young lad who ran up to me, stopped abruptly, almost poked

his finger in my eye as he called, derisively: “Aw, yer aunt’s been

arrested fer being drunk! She was lugged off in a hurry-up! Aw, yer

aunt’s got jugged! Shame on yer! shame on yer!”

I ran home at that, incredulous, but found the house deserted. Then I

knew that it was true. I lay on the bed and cried my eyes sore in great

misery, with the bottom gone out of the world.

My uncle had been called to investigate the matter. He came home and

said that nothing could be done until morning, so we sat up to the

table and made out as best we could with a supper.

The next morning I went to uncle’s overseer with a note to the effect

that he would be unable to be at work that morning. The mill-boys, who

had passed the news around, met me and in indelicate haste referred to

my misfortune, saying, “Goin’ to the trial, Priddy,” and, “What did yer

have to eat last night, Priddy--tripe on a skewer?” I worked apart that

day, as if interdicted from decent society. My aunt’s shame was mine,

perhaps in a greater measure.

On my return home that night I found my foster parents awaiting me with

smiles on their faces.

“Al,” said my aunt, in tears, “I want you to forgive me. I’ve turned

over a new leaf. Both of us have. Uncle and I have been to the city

mission and have taken the pledge. The judge wasn’t hard on me. He sent

us there. We’ve put you to shame often enough and are sorry for it.

You’re to have a better home, and we’ll get along famously after this.

Maybe it’s all been for the best, lad; don’t cry.” And from the new,

inspiring light in her eyes I could tell that she meant every word, and

I thanked God in my heart for the experience that had made such words

possible--strange words on my aunt’s lips.

_Chapter XIX. A Reduction in Wages, Cart-tail Oratory, a Big Strike,

and the Joys and Sufferings thereof_

_Chapter XIX. A Reduction in Wages, Cart-tail Oratory, a big Strike,

and the Joys and Sufferings thereof_

In January of that year forty thousand mill operatives went on strike.

I belonged to the union and had a voice in the preparations for the

strike. The manufacturers wanted to reduce our wages ten per cent. Word

was passed around the mule-room that there was to be a stubborn fight,

and that every union member ought to be on hand at the next regular

meeting, when a vote was to be taken which would be our answer to the

officials.

Our union headquarters were then in a long, narrow room in one of the

business blocks, lighted by smoky oil lamps. The room was crowded when

the meeting was called to order. The men were allowed to declare their

feelings in speeches.

“Th’ miserly manufacturers,” growled Hal Linwood, a bow-legged

Socialist, “they never knows when they are well off, they dunno. Little

enough we gets now, and worse off we’ll be if they slices our wages at

the rate they would go. It ain’t just, and never will be just till we

div--”

“Order!” shouted the chairman. “This here isn’t no Socialist meeting.

What the man said at first is all right, though.”

“Hear! hear!” roared the crowd.

Linwood represented the prevailing opinion, and when the vote was taken

we declared in favor of a strike by a large majority. Messengers were

coming in from the other meetings, and we saw that a general strike

would be effected.

The situation was serious, though, for we were in the heart of winter,

the most inconvenient time for a strike.

I looked forward to it without any scruples, for it meant a chance for

me to rest. I had been given no vacations either in winter or summer,

and I felt that one was certainly due me.

I experienced a guilty feeling when I passed the silent mills the next

Monday morning. I felt as if I were breaking some great, authoritative

law. It was the same feeling I always experienced when I stayed away

from work, even for a day. I always avoided passing the mill for fear

the overseer would run out and drag me in to work.

During the early stages of the strike we were constantly in our strike

headquarters, getting news and appointing committees. Collectors were

sent out to other cities to take up contributions. Mass-meetings were

held in the city hall, and we were addressed by Mr. Gompers and other

labor leaders. Even in the public parks incendiary meetings were

common, and wild-eyed orators called us to resistance--from the tail

end of a cart.

The position of collector was eagerly sought, for to most of the men it

offered a higher wage than could be earned in the mill. It also meant

travel, dinners, and a good percentage of the collections. When I told

my uncle that a man named Chad was earning more money as a collector

than he could earn as a spinner, I was angrily told to mind my own

business.

In fact, the conduct of the strike, as I looked on it from behind the

scenes, was simply a political enterprise. Our leader kept urging us

to resist. He himself was not working in the mill, but was getting his

money from our dues. Several of our meetings were no more than drinking

bouts. The strike manager, who conducted our part in it, elected his

closest friends to important offices which offered good remuneration.

I have been to football games when the home team knew that it was

beaten at the start, and yet the captain has pounded his men and said:

“Come on, boys, we’ve got them whipped.” That sort of artificial

courage was supplied us by our leaders. Perhaps it was necessary; for

the most of us were hungry, our clothes were worn, and the fire at

home had to be kept low. The grocers would not give us credit, and the

winter was cold. But the leaders grinned at us, pounded the gavel on

the table, and shouted: “This is a fight for right, men. We’ve got the

right end of the stick. Keep together and we’ll come out all right!”

At one of the meetings, picketing committees were appointed, with

specific instructions to do all in their power to prevent “scabs” from

going into the mills. We boys were invited to special meetings, where

we were treated to tobacco by the men and lectured on the ethics of the

“scabbing system.”

“Just think, lads, here are those that would step in and take your

work. Think of it! That’s just what they’d do! Take the bread right out

of your mouths, and when the strike is done, you wouldn’t have no work

at all to go to. It’s criminal, and you mustn’t let it pass. Fight,

and fight hard. A ‘scab’s’ not human. Don’t be afraid to fight him by

fair means or foul. And then, too, the manufacturers have the police

and the judges and the governor on their side, because they are moneyed

men! They will try to drive us off the streets so that we can’t show

how strong we are. Look out for the ‘scabs’!”

His words came true, in part. The state police were called, several

strikers were arrested, and given the full penalty for disorderly

conduct and assault. We were not allowed to congregate on the street

corners. The police followed every crowd.

These precautions intensified the anger of the strikers. Strike

headquarters, in which we could meet and pass the day in social ways,

were opened in vacant stores. Here we came in the morning and stayed

through the day, playing cards, checkers, and talking over the strike.

In regard to newspapers, there was a prevailing opinion among us that

the Boston _Journal_ alone favored our side, so we bought it to the

exclusion of all other dailies. Against the Boston _Transcript_ there

was a general antipathy. I liked to read it, but my uncle spoke against

it.

“I don’t want anybody under my roof reading the paper that is owned

hand and foot by our enemies,” he argued, and I saw that I had given

him great offense.

The Boston papers sent their official photographers to take our

pictures. I posed, along with several of my friends, before our

headquarters, and had the pleasure of seeing the picture in the paper

under some such caption as “A group of striking back-boys.”

I did not suffer during the strike. I had a splendid time of it. While

the snow was on the ground I obtained a position as a sweeper in one of

the theaters, and I spent nearly every day for a while at matinées and

evening performances. The strike went on into the early part of May,

and, when the snow had gone, I went out with a little wagon--picked

coal and gathered junk. Through these activities I really earned more

spending money than I ever received for working in the mill. I rather

enjoyed the situation, and could not understand at the time how people

could say they wanted it to end.

Before it did end, the state police withdrew, and we went on guard once

more at the mill gates on watch for “strike-breakers.”

We boys made exciting work of this, encouraged by our elders. I recall

one little man and his wife, who did not believe in unions or strikes.

They did have a greed for money, and they had plenty of it invested in

tenements. They had no children to support. They were, however, among

the first to try to break the strike in our mill. Popular antipathy

broke with direful menace upon their heads. Every night a horde of

neighbors--men, women, boys, and girls--escorted them home from their

work, and followed them back to the mill gates every morning. The women

among us were the most violent. “Big Emily,” a brawny woman, once

brought her fist down on the little man’s head with this malediction:

“Curse ye! ye robber o’ hones’ men’s food! Curse ye! and may ye come

to want, thief!” The poor man had to take the insult, for the flicker

of an eye meant a mobbing. His wife was tripped by boys and mud was

plastered on her face. The pettiest and the meanest annoyances were

devised and ruthlessly carried into effect, while the strike-breaking

couple marched with the set of their faces toward home.

Even the walls of their house could not protect them from the menace of

the mob. One of the strikers rented the lower floor of their house, and

one night, when we had followed them to the gate, he invited us into

the basement, produced an accordion, and started a merry dance, which

lasted well into the night.

The return of the swallows brought an end to the strike. We boys

resolved to vote against a return, for the May days promised joyous

outdoor life. But the men and women were broken in spirit and heavily

in debt, and a return was voted. We had fought four long months and

lost.

_Chapter XX. My Steam Cooker goes wrong. I go to Newport for Enlistment

on a Training-ship_

_Chapter XX. My Steam Cooker goes wrong. I go to Newport for Enlistment

on a Training-ship_

I returned to the mill with the feelings of an escaped convict who has

been returned to his cell after a day of freedom. My uncle found that

he had been put on the black-list, and consequently would not be able

to obtain work in any mill in the city. I was allowed to take up a

new position as “doffer.” This meant an advance in wages, but I knew

that I was not physically equal to it. There was nothing for me to do,

however, but accept, for there was a waiting line at the lower end of

the room and the overseer was not a man who offered things twice.

The mill was getting more and more beyond me. It had taken my strength

and I was incapable of a man’s work, as a man’s work went in the

mule-room. I resolved, then, to break my aunt’s domination, leave the

mill, and earn my own way with the first thing that offered itself

outside the mill.

About this time I read of a young fellow who earned large profits by

selling steam cookers. I wrote to the firm, borrowed five dollars,

and obtained a sample and a territory. This cooker consisted of five

compartments which fitted in each other like a nest of boxes. The

sample was on such a small scale that great care had to be exercised in

a demonstration of it. I practised faithfully on it for a few evenings,

tried to sell one to my aunt, and then resolved to take a day’s holiday

and attempt a few sales. One cooker would yield a good day’s pay. I

resolved to abide by instructions and persevere.

So I started out one afternoon, full of hope, assured that the cooker

would sell on sight and that my way out of the mill had come. I did

not then think that personal appearance had everything to do with

successful salesmanship. I did not stop to think that a tall, bony,

red-eyed youth, with a front tooth missing and wearing trousers which

bagged at the knees, whose coat-sleeves were just high enough to show

that he had never worn a pair of cuffs in his life--I did not stop

to think that he would invite laughter and ridicule on his head. I

faced the situation seriously and earnestly, and I expected the same

consideration from the world.

I walked cheerfully to a wealthy portion of the town, in a district

where I was certain they would like to see my wonderful steam cooker.

In great, gulping patience I waited for an answer to my ring before a

very aristocratic house. I arranged my “patter” and determined that

everything should go on smoothly so far as my talent was concerned.

The lady of the house appeared and I stated my business. She did not

invite me into her house. I exposed my wonderful machine, pulled it

apart, explained how she could cook cabbages, puddings, and meats at

one and the same time. I expatiated on the superiority of steam-cooked

foods, and implied that she could not intelligently keep house and

maintain a reputation as a cook unless she used the steam cooker.

She bore my “patter” with great patience, and must have smiled at my

cockney dialect, of which I was blissfully ignorant.

I had reached that part of the demonstration where the several sections

had to be fitted into each other, and had put the first two sections

in place and told what foods could be cooked in them, when I came to

grief at the third section. It stuck, and in spite of the beads of

perspiration which rolled down my face and a vain attempt to keep up

the “patter,” I could not unfasten it until I had turned the wonderful

cooker upside down, a proceeding which would have emptied the beans and

puddings in practical use. The woman was very kindly, and she dismissed

me with cordial words. But I went down those steps chagrined and fully

persuaded that I must stay in the mill.

My uncle was now earning his living by keeping another store. He and my

aunt were spending the profits in a next-door saloon. My home life had

not improved.

Then I remembered the novels I had read; some of them, an “Army and

Navy Series,” had told of apprentice life in the navy. I knew that

Newport was the recruiting station, and I resolved to enlist.

When I proposed the matter to my aunt, she agreed to let me go. The

following morning I obtained a day’s holiday and went on the electric

cars to the noted seaport town.

This trip abroad, with its opportunities to see that there were people

who did other things besides work in the mill, and with its freedom and

sunshine, made me more desperate than ever to leave the mill. I was

like the Pilgrim in the first chapter of Bunyan’s allegory, running

from the City of Destruction, fingers in ears, calling “Life, Life!”

I walked around Newport cliffs and touched the gateways of the palaces

which front the famous walk. I reveled in the shimmer of the sea and

the fragrance of shrubs and flowers. This was life and the world! I

must get out in it; take my place daily in it, and live the life of a

Man. God made the sun and the fragrant air; he made the flowers and

created health. That was due me, because it was not my sin, but that of

my elders, which had shut me out of it through my boyhood. These were

some of the thoughts uppermost in my mind. I walked the narrow streets

and broad avenues--places which I had read of and had never hoped to

see. If I had to return to the mill, I could say that I had seen so

much of the outside world, at least!

After I had watched the departure of some torpedo-boats in the

direction of a gray-fronted fort across the bay, I hurried in the

direction of the naval college to see if Uncle Sam would give me the

chance to leave the mill which others had denied.

I passed a training-ship with its housed deck. I walked along past

drill grounds and barracks and entered a quiet office. With a beating

heart I announced to the attendant that I had come to offer myself for

enlistment in the training-school. He led me into a large, dim room to

a group of uniformed officers. They asked me a few questions, tested me

with bits of colored wool, and then I was commanded to disrobe.

The remainder of the examination must have been exceedingly

perfunctory, for the scales registered only one hundred and eighteen

pounds and I stood five feet eleven inches in my bare feet. That was

enough to exclude me, but they went on with the tests, examining my

teeth (the front one was missing), pounding my chest, and testing the

beat of my heart. No comments were made, and after I had dressed again

I was sent to an anteroom and told to wait their decision.

For a few long minutes I sat in the silent room wondering what would

be the decision. I was optimistic enough to plan what I would do if I

should enter the navy. I should--here the attendant came, offered me a

tiny card, and without a word bowed me to the door. I knew then that I

had been refused. I walked through the yard in a daze. When I reached

the city, I took heart to read the card they had given me. I recall

that it read thus simply: “REFUSED. Defective teeth. Cardia--” Uncle

Sam did not want to give me a chance!

_Chapter XXI. The Ichabod of Mule-rooms, some Drastic Musing, College

at my Finger-tips, the Mill People wait to let me pass, and I am Waved

into the World by a Blind Woman_

_Chapter XXI. The Ichabod of Mule-rooms, some Drastic Musing, College

at my Finger-tips, the Mill People wait to let me pass, and I am Waved

into the World by a Blind Woman_

On my return from Newport I went to work in one of the oldest mills

in the city. The “mules” were in a gloomy basement--a crowded, dim,

and very dirty place to work in. It was the Ichabod of mule-rooms,

with every trace of glory gone. The machinery was obsolete and had

to be helped along with monkey-wrenches, new parts, and constant,

nerve-wearing wearing watchfulness. The alleys were so narrow that the

back-boys had to edge in between the frames; and expanded chest often

meant a destructive rubbing on bobbins and a breaking of threads. It

always seemed to me that this room was reserved by the corporation to

work off its veteran spinners and its unreliable ones, its veteran

machinery, and its bad-tempered, ineffective bosses. This mule-room

was the byword among the spinners at that end of the city. A man hung

his head when he had to tell another that he was working in it; for

it generally was his testimony to his fellows that he was in the last

ditch. Spinners graduated from that room into scrubbing or oiling.

The personnel of this room was always changing; but its prevailing

character remained the same: a dull-eyed, drunken set of men, a

loafing, vicious set of young fellows who worked a week and loafed

three.

I chose to work in that place because it was my first opportunity for

an advance from doffing to “joiner.” A “joiner” is one who shares with

another the operation of a pair of mules--a semi-spinner. The pay is

divided, and the work is portioned off between the two. I had been

working toward this position for six years and a half, and now it had

come, even in that miserable room, I was eager to see how I should

manage.

But, oh, the mockery and vanity of all efforts, even my wild ones, to

master one of those machines! The lurching, halting, snapping things

could not be mastered. Threads snapped faster than I could fasten

them. One tie and two breaks, two ties and three breaks, along the

row of glistening spindles, until there were so many broken threads

that I had to stop the mule to catch up. And every stop meant the

stoppage of wages, and the longer a thread stayed broken, the less I

was earning; and on top of that, the bosses swore at us for stopping

at all. I should have stopped work then and there--it would have been

the sensible thing to do--but I was no loafer, and I was trying to make

good in this new work--the end of a long desire. The other “joiners”

and spinners did not try to keep at it. They gave up the work as soon

as they discovered how useless it was to try to make a decent wage

from the worn-out machines. Only myself and a few poor men who were

there because they could not get any better place stayed on and fought

the one-sided fight. Every time the machinery broke--and breaks were

constant--the machinist grumbled, and took his own time in coming with

his wrenches.

The physical and mental reaction of all this upon me was most woeful.

My muscles grew numb under the excessive pressure on them, so much

so that I often stood still when the threads were snapping about me

and looked on them as if I had never seen a broken thread before.

Or I would suddenly stop in my wild dashes this way and that in the

mending of threads and look dazedly about, feel a stifling half-sob

coming to my throat, and my lips would tremble under the misery and

hopelessness of it all. My only consolation, and very poor, too, lay in

the clock. At six o’clock it would all end for a few hours at least,

and I could get out of it all. But when you watch the clock under those

circumstances, an hour becomes two, and one day two days. So the labor

was, after all, a wild frenzy, a race and a stab and a sob for ten and

a half hours! I can never think of it as anything more.

Some of my work-fellows in that room were sent to jail for assault,

petty thieving, and drunkenness. I used to think about them, in the

jail, doing light work under healthy conditions, even though they were

paying penalties for lawlessness, but I, who had done no crime, had to

have ten hours and a half of that despairing contest with a machine.

How much better to be sewing overalls or making brooms in a jail! I had

to stay in the house at night in order to be thoroughly rested for the

next day’s work. I had no liberty.

And, added to all this, there was the constant depressive contact

with unsympathetic and foul-mouthed desecrators of ambition. Those

who knew me in that room were aware that I was trying to avoid every

degenerative and impure act. Some of them passed word around also that

I was attending such and such a church! They came to the end of the

mule, when the boss chanced not to be around, and, in a huddled group,

stood at my elbows, where I had work to do, and put on their dirty lips

the foulest vocabulary that ever stained foul air.

Then one day there came a flash which clearly lighted up everything.

“Why are you going through this wild, unequal labor in this dull room

day by day! Why? Do you absolutely have to do it? Are others keeping at

it, as you? Why, why, why?” each one bigger than its fellow, made me

meet every fact squarely. “To what end all this?”

My labor was helping to buy beer at home! I was giving up all my wage

to my aunt, and getting back a little spending money. I had fifteen

cents in the bank at the time. I did not _have_ to overstrain myself as

I was doing. I _had_ the privilege of giving up my work at any moment

I chose. I was no slave to such conditions. No man could drive me to

such tasks. Giving up the work only meant a scolding from my aunt and

a little going about among other mills to find another, and perhaps

better, position. This was a new thought to me--that I could leave my

work when I wanted; that I might be given work too hard for me.

Previously I had worked on the supposition that whatever was given me

_ought_ to be done at all costs; that the _mill_ was the measure of a

man, and not _man_ the measure of the mill. I had always looked upon

my work as a test of my moral capacity; that any refusal to work, even

when it was harder than I could bear, was a denial of my moral rights.

But now the worm of conscience was boring through me. Why should I,

at twenty years of age, not be entitled to what I earned, to spend on

my education, instead of its being spent on my aunt’s appetite for

intoxicants?

Then, too, why should I have to work with people who had no moral or

mental sympathy with me? Was five dollars and seventy-five cents, my

pay for the first week in that gloomy room, worth it? Assuredly not.

But, then, what could I do outside of the mill? I had done nothing else

but work in the mill and spend a little time on a farm. If I left the

mill at so late a time, left all the technical knowledge I had gathered

while I had been going through it, should I be doing the best thing for

my future? There seemed nothing in the future from the mill, for, as I

have shown, I had not the strength to cope with more difficult tasks

than those that then faced me. Probably if I got out of doors, in some

open-air work, I should gain strength and be able to make progress in

some other line of work. But I had been trying for that, and nothing

had come. What then?

Then the greatest light of all came--flooded me. _Leave the mill at any

cost!_ Stop right where I was; quibble no more, offend all, risk all,

but _get away from the mill_! It was all so simple after all! Why had

I not worked it out before? _Leave home! Have all I earned to save for

my education!_ That was my emancipation proclamation, and I started to

follow it.

First of all, I went to the overseer in that dingy room and told

him frankly that the work he had given me to do was too hard for

me. I could not keep it up. I also told him I did not care to leave

just then, but, if he had any easier work in the room--doffing,

for instance--I should like to continue. He did not receive this

declaration with any expression of reproach, as I had expected, but

said simply: “You go to work back-boying on those first three mules.

You’ll make as much money by it as at anything in here.”

This first break made, how easily all others followed, as if they had

been waiting around all the time! It was just at this time that I met

a young fellow who had come back to the city to spend his vacation from

study at a university in the Middle West. To him I told all my thoughts

concerning getting away from the mill. I said: “I wonder if I went out

where you go to college, and worked at something for a time, just to be

away from mills, whether in time I might not have money enough on hand

to be able to start on _my_ way towards an education?”

“How much do you think you would have to save?” he asked, smilingly.

“Why--why, hundreds of dollars, isn’t it?”

“Do you think so, Al?”

“Why, certainly.”

“And how long would you work to save up?”

“Oh,” I replied, “that depends upon what I get to do and how much I

could put by.”

“Suppose, Al, that you could go right out and start right in with

school at the university--it has a preparatory course--and work your

way along, what would you say?”

“You mean, jump right in now, this year?”

He nodded.

“But it’s all I can do to board and clothe myself by working hard in

the mill. I couldn’t by any means work hard enough to pay for going

through a school.”

“How much would you be willing to--oh, Al, you’re all wrong about the

cost. I tell you, old fellow, you can get through a year at my place on

a hundred dollars: board, tuition--”

“What’s that?”

“Teaching and room and heat. All the rest of your expenses won’t amount

to over fifty dollars, if you’re careful.”

I gazed on him, open-mouthed, for I thought he was laughing at me.

“Say--you aren’t kidding me, are you? All that is straight--about being

so--so cheap?”

“Why, yes, it’s all true enough. I think you can manage it too, Al.

I’ll do my best to speak a word for you. Get ready to go in three

weeks, no matter how much money you have. I think you’ll be able to get

some outside work to do at the university, to work your way through and

meet expenses.”

“Well,” I said, “I sha’n’t be sorry even if I don’t get a chance at

the school for a while, you know. If I could only get something to do

_near_ there, my chance might come later. I shouldn’t be any worse off

than I am here. I can earn my living at something, don’t you think so?”

“Why, yes, I do; but I think you will have a chance at the school

without having to wait.”

“Oh, I can hardly believe that,” I exclaimed for sheer joy.

“But you can make all your plans for it, just the same,” said my friend

with confidence.

This new outlook set every strong emotion shouting in me. The world was

not dressed in so gray a garb as I had thought. I went home and told my

aunt about my new plan. She said:

“You’ve never asked _me_ if you could go!”

“Well, no,” I said, “I haven’t; and I don’t think I need to. I mean to

set out for myself, at any rate. It’s about time now that I was doing

something for myself, don’t you think so?”

“I think you’re an impudent puppy, that’s what!” indignantly cried my

aunt.

I told Pat and Harry, and they could hardly believe their own ears; but

they urged me to take the chance, for they thought it was a “chance.”

My work--all work in the mill--had suddenly taken on a temporary aspect

now, a means to a great end and not an end in itself. I could look on

it now and feel that I had mastered it at last. The throbbing, jubilant

shout of the victor was on my lips now. I saw past those lint-laden

rooms, the creaking, whirling pulleys, and the clacking belts; past

them, and everything that the mill meant to me; to a very pleasant new

life ahead; one whose ground was holy and on which it was the privilege

of but few to walk. I think there must have been a complete effacement

of all the lines that had marked my face. For once, I felt sure of

myself; sure that all the lines of leading were to mass into one sure

road toward a better thing.

My mind was not on my work for the following three weeks. I went about

with a dream in my eyes. I know I whistled much and began to lose all

respect for those machines which had driven me, in times past, like a

chained slave. I even found myself having much pity for all the other

men and boys in the mill. I went among them with hesitation, as if I

had a secret which, if told, would make them feel like doing what I was

about to do.

I had found out from a ticket agency in the city that my fare to the

Middle West would cost approximately seventeen dollars. I knew that

in two weeks, with the week’s wage that the mill always kept back and

with the seven dollars my Uncle Stanwood had promised to let me have,

that I should have my railway fare and incidental expenses, anyway. So

there, in the ticket agency, I had the clerk take me, with his pencil,

over the route I should later take in the cars. It was a wonderful

itinerary. I was to see the mountains of New England, the lakes of the

border, and to plunge into a new part of the country! It would take

me three days. How I stared at the prospect of so much traveling! I

obtained time-tables with maps containing the route over the different

railways I should ride on during that journey away from the mill. Three

days from the cotton mills! That was a thought to make a fellow dance

all day without rest.

One day I lay sprawled out at full length in an alley behind a box,

so that the overseer might not see me, when Micky Darrett peeped over

my shoulders at the maps I had spread out on which I had traced and

retraced my great journey with a pencil.

“What yer’ doin’, Priddy?” said Micky. “Oh,” I announced with studied

nonchalance, “just planning out the road I shall take in two weeks. I’m

going to college, you know.”

“Oh,” laughed Micky, “quit yer kiddin’ like that! _What_ are you doin’,

really?”

“Just what I said, Micky. I mean it.”

“Gee!” gasped the little Irishman; “yer a sporty bluffer, Priddy!”

“But ’tis true, though,” I insisted.

“What yer givin’?” growled Micky. “It’s only swells goes ter college.”

“That’s what you think, Micky, but it’s God’s truth that I go in two

weeks and try to make a start.”

“Gee!” he gasped; “I allus thought you was poor. You must have got a

lot of money saved, all right, all right!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Micky. I shall have about three weeks’

wages and what my uncle gives me--seven dollars--if he gives it to me

at all. That’s all I’ve got to start on.”

“Don’t stuff that down me, Priddy!” cried Micky, in great disgust, for

he hated to be made sport of. “You can’t bluff yer uncle.”

But nevertheless he published all over the room what I had told him,

and thereafter I answered many questions about myself and my plans, and

had to spend much energy in rebutting the prevalent suspicion that I

was “bluffing the room.”

Then came my last Saturday in the mill--the last day I have ever spent

in the mill. I did my work with a great conscience that day. I don’t

believe the second hand had to look twice to see if I had done my

sweeping well. The spinners had become very friendly, as if my ambition

had won respect from them, and even the overseer came to me just before

I left the room, took me by the hand, and said: “I wish you the very

best of luck, Priddy. Keep to it!”

On Monday morning, at six o’clock, I sat in the train. I had drawn

thirteen dollars from the mill, received seven dollars from my uncle,

said good-by to my old friends, and paid fifteen dollars and sixty-five

cents for a ticket. Aunt Millie, in tears, had kissed me, and had hoped

that “I’d do well, very well!” Uncle Stanwood had carried my hand-bag

for me to the electric car and had given me good counsel out of his

full heart. Now I sat listening to the mill bells and whistles giving

their first warning to the workers. “You’ll never call for me again, I

hope!” I said to myself as I listened. Then the train started, and I

glued my face to the window-pane to catch a last glimpse of the city

where for seven years I had been trying to get ahead of machinery

and had failed. The train went slowly over the grade crossings. I

saw the mill crowds at every street, held back by the gates, waiting

deferentially while I, who had been one of them last week, was whirled

along towards an education. I saw them as I had walked with them--women

in shawls and looking always tired, men in rough clothes and with dirty

clay pipes prodded in their mouths, and girls in working aprons, and

boys, just as I had been, in overalls and under-shirts. And I was going

away from it all, in spite of everything!

One of my friends was an old woman, stone blind. When I had given her

my farewell, she had said: “Al, I’ll be at the crossing in front of my

house when the train goes by on Monday morning. Look for me. I’ll wave

my handkerchief when the train passes, lad, and you’ll know by that

sign that I’m sending you off to make something of yourself!”

We came to the outskirts of the city; the mill crowds had been left,

and at last a lonely crossing came, the one for which I had been

looking. I had the window open. The train was gathering speed, but I

saw the black-garbed blind woman, supported by her daughter, standing

near the gates, her eyes fixed ahead, and her handkerchief fluttering,

fluttering, as we plunged into the country.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.